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THE GREAT SINNERS 
OF THE BIBLE 



BY 



LOUIS ALBERT BANKS. D.D. 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



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1)5571 



Copyright by 

EATON & MAINS, 

J899. 

Transfer from 
8.Soidk ^ Homa Llbyi 
Ocu28,i931 



First Edition Printed November, 1899 

Reprinted March, 1900; January, 1902; March, 1903; March, X906; 

December, 1908; December, 19 13; January, 1929 






TO 

AXJLi EA.STORS 

"WHO ASPIRE TO BE 

SOTJIL. WINNERS 

this volxjmb is 

Fraternally Dedioatbu 

Bar THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS 



I PAGE 
Eve's Dialogue with the Devil 15 

II 
'^ The First Coward in the World 26 

III 
The Sinner Cross-examined 39 

IV 
Noah, and the Tragic Story of the Men Who Built the 

Ark 49 

V 
Noah's Drunkenness — The Peril of the Wine Glass. ... 61 

VI 
Camping on the Road to Sodom 75 

VII 
The Ladder of the Angels and the Sinner at the Foot . . S8 

VIII 
The " Slings and Arrows " of an Outraged Conscience.. 98 

"^ The Three Most Notorious Bad Bargains in History. . . 109 

X 
The Golden Calf 119 

XI 
>4 The Cowards and the Giants 133 

XII 
The Angel that Blocks the Way 147 

XIII 
The Melancholy Fate of Mr. Facing-both-ways 160 



C CONTENTS 

XIV PAGE 

The Flight and Escape of a Sinner. 172 

XV 
The Evolution of a Sinner , . , 184 

XVI 
A Captain with His Foot on the Neck of a King.. 195 

XVII 
The Scarlet Line in the Window 206 

XVIII 
Poetic Justice as Illustrated in the Tragic Story of 
Adoni-bezek 216 

XIX 
The Sinner's Fight Against the Stars 227 

XX 
The Shibboleth of Fate 236 

XXI 
The Man with a Low Aim 246 

^ XXII 

A King in Hiding 257 

XXIII 
P? The Difference Between Self-conceit and Self-respect. . 268 

XXIV 
The Story of a Man Who Was Caught in His Own Trap 279 

XXV 
The Handwriting on the Wall 289 

XXVI 
The Valley of Decision 298 

XXVII 
The Villain in the First Christmas Drama 305 

XXVIII 
The Easter Conspiracy 319 



AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION 



The Sunday Night Service 

One of the great problems of the Christian 
Church of every denomination in all parts of the 
country for several years has been how to draw and 
help a large congregation on Sunday nights. A 
great many experiments have been tried. Some- 
times it has been thought that people were preju- 
diced against the church building itself, and so in 
many instances this has been closed on Sunday 
night, and the hall, the theater, or the opera house 
hired for the service. Such experiments have usu- 
ally succeeded for a time, but have been, without 
exception, I think, of a temporary character. 

In other places the Sunday night service has 
been secularized so as to appear just as little like 
a church as possible. Expensive music has been 
provided to catch the ear of the multitude. A pub- 
lic reader is sometimes billed as one of the attrac- 
tions. The discourse of the preacher is not called 
a sermon, but a lecture, or an address, and is upon 
some new book of popular interest, or some problem 



8 THE SUNDAY K'IGHT SERVICE 

of sociology, or kindred theme. These experiments 
have lasted, sometimes, at greater length than the 
other ; but they also run their course after a little 
while. 

Others have given up in despair and closed the 
church at night. Still others go on their way with 
fairly well filled pews in the morning, and only 
here and there a scattered listener at night. 

For many years I have been pastor of down-town 
churches in large cities, and during all those years 
have never failed to have full houses on Sunday 
night. The publishers of this volume have asked 
me to furnish them with a series of Sunday 
night sermons running through the autumn and 
winter, and this book is the result. The ser- 
mons included in it were preached during the 
autumn and winter of 1898 and 1899, in the First 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Cleveland, Ohio. 
They were delivered to audiences that constantly 
taxed the seating capacity of a very large church. 

The publishers have also asked me to add a 
word concerning my theory about the Sunday night 
service and my method of conducting it. My 
theory is very simple. It is this : men and women 
will not go to church very long, or very frequently, 
unless they are personally preached to. I preach 
on Sunday morning to Christian people largely. 



THE SUNDAY NIGHT SEEVICE 9 

and they in large majority compose the audience. 
On Sunday night I preach to sinners, as directly 
and simply and earnestly as I know how, and hun- 
dreds of them come to hear me preach every Sun- 
day night. I do not try to preach an easy Gospel. 
I do not call the sermon a lecture or an address, 
or try in any way to hide the fact that it is a 
straightforward, honest effort to win a man from 
his sins and bring him to the mercy-seat. I go just 
as directly to his conscience as I can. I plead with 
him, with all the earnestness there is in me, to 
pause in his downward career and come now to 
Christ. I find there is wonderful interest in the 
old Bible stories; that no story of modern fiction 
has such gripping power on an audience as the old 
stories of the Bible translated into modern lan- 
guage and told in the tongue of to-day. 

I believe that one of the greatest reasons why 
unconverted people do not go to church on Sunday 
nights, in many places, is because they are not 
preached to. Who of us would want to go very long 
to hear sermons addressed entirely to somebody 
else ? I asked a layman, one Monday morning, in 
an eastern city, if they were having any conver- 
sions in the church of which he was a member, and 
he replied, with a sarcastic smile, "O, no ; our pas- 
tor does all his preaching to the people who are 



10 THE SUNDAY NIGHT SERVICE 

going to heaven." Many times a pastor refrains 
from heart-searching denunciations of sin and 
earnest demands for personal righteousness, for 
fear of driving away his hearers. But a greater 
mistake could not be made. There are in every 
community many men and women who are living 
sinful lives, whose consciences constantly rebuke 
them for their course, who are haunted with a 
longing for something better, and whose hearts 
turn toward the man who speaks the true message 
from God, as a flower turns toward the sun. They 
feel that he speaks to them and they cannot stay 
away ; though the word pierces like an arrow, they 
will come back again and again, until they are won 
from their sins and saved. 

My own method is to seek for direct results 
from such sermons whenever and wherever they are 
delivered. It is a great waste of resources to arouse 
a man's conscience through a sermon, to stir up his 
emotions, to cause his spirit to be alert, to make 
him see his duty, and then give him no chance or 
encouragement to immediate action. At the close 
of a sermon especially addressed to unconverted 
people I always give some opportunity for confes- 
sion of Christ and the expression of a determina- 
tion to lead a Christian life. I do not always do it 
in the same way. Sometimes I ask for the uplifted 



THE SUNDAY NIGHT SERVICE 11 

hand or the rising in the congregation; at other 
times I ask the sinner convicted of sin to come for- 
ward and kneel at the altar, and at other times 
invite him into an inquiry room. My idea is not 
to get into a rut, so that everybody will know be- 
forehand exactly what I will do as to method; 
though even a uniform custom is better than to 
arouse sinners by an earnest presentation of God's 
word and then let them go away to all the hurry 
and work and temptation of the world without 
opening the way for them to commit themselves 
immediately and definitely on the right side. It 
is very rarely that a Sunday night passes in which 
some one does not take advantage of the oppor- 
tunity to make an open and public confession of 
Christ. Sometimes the church is greatly comforted 
and strengthened by seeing many come out openly 
on the Lord's side. Such a close to a day's work 
is a constant inspiration to the church itself. It 
keeps alive the evangelistic spirit; it holds the 
members constantly face to face with the great mis- 
sion of the church, which is to preach the Gospel to 
every creature ; it develops the gifts and graces of 
Christian workers; it stimulates and encourages 
those who have recently come to Christ, and, in- 
deed, keeps the whole church alive to the supreme 
work of saving men. 



12 THE SUNDAY NIGHT SERVICE 

Perhaps another word in regard to the character 
of the preaching would be well, though the sermons 
themselves are the best evidence of that. I put a 
good deal of time on the selection of the topic. I 
try to invent a method of stating the theme in such 
a way as not to repel people, but rather to attract 
them to come to hear the sermon. I am sure this 
is productive of good results. I have known people 
to come tAventy or thirty miles because the theme 
had been stated in such a way as to catch their at- 
tention. The story is told of a young fellow from 
the city who had been fishing all day in a lake up 
in northern Michigan, and gave as a reason, at 
night, for coming home empty-handed, that he 
"did not seem to be able to attract the attention of 
the fish." It is just so with the Gospel fisherman : 
he will come home empty-handed at last unless he 
attracts the attention of men and women so that 
they will hearken to the message which he brings 
them. 

After the theme is selected, the next question 
is to present it in such a way that it will be at 
once interesting and forceful. In order to win a 
verdict the lawyer knows that he must not only 
attract the attention of the juryman, but he must 
convince and compel him. So the Christian minis- 
ter, pleading at the bar of the conscience of a sinful 



THE SUNDAY NIGHT SERVICE 13 

man, must seek to win his verdict. He will not 
care whether he makes a man langh or cry, so he 
causes him to repent and accept Christ. He will 
not care whether the man thinks he is a great 
preacher ; whether his rhetoric is beautiful or his 
periods eloquent. He will only care to make the 
man see that he is a sinner against God, and that 
Jesus Christ who died to redeem him is now willing 
and able to save him. Simplicity and blood ear- 
nestness — these must be characteristics of the ser- 
mon that will gather and hold a large congregation 
on Sunday night, and help and save them after 
they are gathered. 

Other characteristics are illustration and brev- 
ity. It is the age of pictures; not only pictures 
gathered by the photographer or the painter, but 
pictures of life and doing in fiction. The novel is 
a great teacher in our day. And the sermons that 
are catching the ear and the heart of sinning men 
throughout the world, and turning them to God, 
are sermons full of illustrations. Perhaps that has 
always been true, but it is certainly true in our 
time. And saving sermons to-day are brief. Es- 
pecially should this be true of Sunday night. The 
day is past. It has been full of many things to 
attract and hold the attention. It is evening. The 
wise man knows that to do his best work with a 



/ 



14 T^ttE SUNDAY NIGHT SERVICE 

man's heart or conscience he must bring what he 
has to say into brief compass and strike straight 
home, and then quit. 

I believe full Sunday night congregations are 
within the reach of every earnest preacher of ordi- 
nary intelligence and common sense in all our large 
towns and cities. Set your pulpit on fire, brother, 
with an earnest giving of yourself to save men, and 
multitudes of sinners will flock to see the flame, 
their hard hearts will be melted, and they will be 
saved. 

Louis Albeet Banks. 

Cleveland, Ohio. 



THE GREAT SINNERS OF 
THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEE I 

Eve's Dialogue With the Devil 

Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of 
the field which the Lord God had made. And he said 
unto the woman, Yea, hath God said. Ye shall not eat of 
every tree of the garden ? And the woman said unto the 
serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the gar- 
den: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of 
the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither 
shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto 
the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know 
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be 
opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for 
food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to 
be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit there- 
of, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; 
and he did eat. — Genesis iii, 1-6. 

Some people have quibbled over tbis story and 
raised a laugh by calling it the snake story, and by 
many kindred allusions, but there is no reason for 
being troubled at the idea of God choosing to speak 

15 



16 THE GKEAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

his message in an unusual waj, or in his permit- 
ting the incarnation of the evil spirit in the form 
of a serpent. JSTothing in the Bible is harder to 
believe than are the actual occurrences of our own 
times. If the destruction of the Spanish fleet at 
Manila without the loss of a single life on the part 
of the Americans, or the destruction of Cervera's 
fleet of swift, modern war ships with the loss of but 
one life on the part of their enemies, had happened 
four or ^ve thousand years ago, and been recorded 
in the Old Testament, what derision the infidels 
would have flung at the story! I can imagine 
Ingersoll having a lecture on the mistakes of 
Dewey or Sampson fully as witty and scornful as 
his diatribe on "The Mistakes of Moses." 

It does not make the least difference to us 
whether this dialogue between Eve and the serpent 
is a literal historical occurrence or whether it is 
a poetical portrayal of the drama by which sin 
became a dark and real fact in human life. Its 
message to us is exactly the same in either case. 
One thing is sure, the picture is true to life ; and it 
is full of graphic illustrations, valuable to the men 
and women who are living now, and upon whom 
the devil is making attacks as subtle and deceitful 
as those by which he accomplished the overthrow 
of Eve. 



EVE S DIALOGUE (V^ITH THE DEVIL IT 

The devil makes his first pass at Eve by insinu- 
ating against God's goodness and generosity. What 
an ingratiating question it is! ^'Can it be pos- . 
sible," says the serpent, in substance, with a sar- 
donic smile, "that your God has shut off a part of 
the garden from you and commanded that you Qj 
shall not eat of every tree of the garden ?" Eve's 
fatal blunder was that she did not thrust his vile 
suggestion back into his very teeth and end the 
conversation then and there. If she had been as 
loyal to God as an old Scotch woman I have heard 
about, the story would have had a different ending. 
This old woman was in hard circumstances, and 
having no bread she knelt on the floor of her little 
cabin, built close against the rocks of a mountain 
side, and prayed for some. A roguish boy of the 
neighborhood, chancing to pass that way, heard her 
voice and listened at the door. He hurried home 
and quickly returned with a loaf, ran up on the 
rocks, and so upon the cabin roof, and tossed the 
bread down the smokeless chimney. It rolled from 
the empty fireplace to the chair beside which the 
old woman still knelt, earnestly praying. There 
was a moment's pause, and then she was loud in 
her thanksgiving to God for the speedy answer to 
her prayer. 

"Ye need na' be thankin' the Lord for it," the 



18 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

youngster shouted down tlie chimney; "I brought 
it." 

"Ah, my laddie," cried she, from below, "it was 
the Lord that sent it, even if the devil brought it." 

But Eve was not thus loyal at heart. She begins 
not to state clearly the divine goodness, but to 
weakly apologize for the Lord, and ends her sen- 
tence by showing her own doubt both of God's good- 
ness and of the sincerity of his warnings. The 
fact is that Eve was all ready for the serpent when 
he came. She had herself been looking on the for- 
bidden tree with rebellious longing, and had been 
so taken up with desire for the forbidden fruit 
that she had forgotten to be grateful for the beauty 
and fragrance and food that hung from every other 
bough of every other tree in the garden of Eden. 
A great many people slander the devil by trying 
to throw on him the brunt of all their sins, but St. 
James says : "Every man is tempted, when he is 
drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then 
when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin." 
So the beginning, after all, of Eve's ruin was in 
her own ungrateful imagination, where she had 
permitted these rebellious thoughts to lie until they 
were like dry tinder waiting for the devil's match. 

Eve left out a most important and significant 
word in stating God's permission to "eat of the 



EVE^S DIALOGUE WITH THE DEVIL 19 

trees of the garden/' and thus detracted much from 
the generous character of the provision which God 
had made. But when she came to speak of the 
warning of the Lord against eating of the forbid- 
den fruit, she put in words of her own to make the 
prohibition seem more hard and severe. From 
Eve's statement, "But of the fruit of the tree which 
is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye 
shall not eat of it, neither shall je touch it, lest ye 
die," one would think that God had utterly shut 
up the tree, guarding it with the most extreme 
jealousy and rigor, when the only prohibition was 
against eating of the fruit — ^which would bring 
sorrow and death. How often we hear people talk- 
ing the same way now; as though God had given 
us appetites and desires which were never to be 
gratified, which are only to be resisted, and inti- 
mating that man's only chance for happiness lies 
in the violation of God's commandment, when the 
truth is that God has marvelously adapted us to the 
world in which we live, and in the wholesome and 
right gratification of our desires there is always 
peace and happiness ; the prohibitions of God's law 
are only signal lights that tell where are the dan- 
gerous rocks upon which our souls may be wrecked. 
But Eve also shows, in her answer to the serpent, 
that she is beginning to doubt the sincerity of the 



20 THE GREAT SIl^NEKS OF THE BIBLE 

divine warning. The declaration of God had been ; 
^^Thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that thou 
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." But after 
Eve has begun her parley with the tempter her ver- 
sion of this clear and simple statement is, "Ye 
shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye 
die." "Lest ye die !" This is what she substitutes 
for "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt 
surely die." "Lest ye die !" How different is that 
from the other statement. The first is sure death ; 
the second is a bare possibility of something hap- 
pening. Thus Eve was getting ready for the bold 
onslaught of her enemy which was to insure her 
destruction. She had lost her vantage ground by 
not flinging the lie in his face when first he began 
to slander her heavenly Eather. 

A few years ago a yoimg Englishwoman crossed 
the Atlantic to marry a young man in New York! 9) 
city to whom she had been betrothed in Englandy 
and who had come to this country two years be- 
fore to engage in business. She was to marry 
him at the home of a friend of her mother's with 
whom she was staying. During the time she was 
making up her wedding outfit he came to see her 
one evening when he was just drunk enough to be 
foolish. She was shocked and pained beyond 
measure. She afterward learned that he was in 



EVE^S DIALOGUE WITH THE DEVIL 21 

the habit of drinking to excess. She immediately 
stopped her preparations and told him she could 
not marry him. He protested that she would drive 
him to distraction, promising never to drink 
another drop. But her answer was : "I dare not 
trust my future happiness to a drunkard. I came 
three thousand miles, and I will return three thou- 
sand miles.'' How much better it would have been 
had Eve only said to the advances of the tempter : 
^^!N'o. I will not trust my future happiness to a 
slanderer of God." But, instead, she parleyed 
with him, revealing to him the brooding thoughts 
of ingratitude and rebellion which she cherished 
secretly, until we are not astonished at the bold, 
brazen declaration of the serpent in reply: "Ye 
shall not surely die !" And when Eve had so far 
yielded to the fascinations of sin that she could 
hear God's word declared false and still remain in 
conversation with the person who uttered the dec- 
laration, she was ready to take the fatal step from 
which there was no retraction. 

l^otice Eve's conduct then: "And when the 
woman saw that the tree was good for food, and 
that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be 
desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit 
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her hus- 
band with her ; and he did eat." How did Eve see 



22 THE GREAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

that it was good for food ? Was it some new dis- 
covery she had made? Or was it that she had 
come to look at it through the deviFs spectacles? 
Isaiah says : "Woe unto them that call evil good, 
and good evil." Association with such people al- 
ways means deterioration. Eve had conversed 
with Satan until God's commandment seemed to 
her to be a lie, and the lies of the serpent seemed to 
be the truth. 

Hear the message, you who need it! Some of 
you remember when the simple word of God, as 
stated in your mother's Bible, was law and gospel 
to you. When God said, "The wages of sin is 
death," you never doubted it for a moment. When 
God said, "Look not thou upon the wine when it is 
red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when 
it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a 
serpent, and stingeth like an adder," you had no 
doubt that it was heaven's truth ; a merciful warn- 
ing to keep your feet from a dangeroiis path. There 
was a time when the declaration of God's word 
that the house of the strange woman is "the way to 
hell" seemed certain fact. There was a time when 
the declaration of the divine word which says, "Be 
not deceived ; God is not mocked ; for whatsoever 
a man soweth, that shall he also reap," seemed as 
natural a truth as the growth of the wheat crop on 



eve's dialogue with the devil 23 

your father's farm. What has wrought all this 
change ? How is it that you are so indifferent and 
reckless of these statements now? Is it because 
you have discovered them to be untrue ? Ah ! you 
know that is not the case. The devil pays the same 
wages now as in the days of Eve. The adder in 
the wine has not lost its sting. The house of lust 
has not closed its back door into hell. The fields of 
the soul have not lost their fertility to grow har- 
vests according to the seed sown. What has 
wrought the change ? Is not the true answer this : 
that you have parleyed with the old serpent, that 
you have hardened your conscience, that you have 
played fast and loose with your better nature, until 
you are beginning to call evil good, and good 
evil? 

Peace went out of the garden as sin entered it. 
Two vagabonds, in fear born of their sins, hid > 
themselves from the presence of God. The garden ' 
ceased to be a paradise when sin came to possess 
their hearts. Truly has some poet written : 

"If sin be in the heart jz 

The fairest sky is foul, and sad the summer weather, 
The eye no longer sees the lambs at play together, 
The dull ear cannot hear the birds that sing so sweetly, 
And all the joy of God's good earth is gone completely, 

If sin be in the heart. 



24 THE GREAT SIW^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

"If peace be in the heart 
The wildest winter storm Is full of solemn beauty, 
The midnight lightning flash but shows the path of duty, 
Each living creature tells some new and joyous story. 
The very trees and stones all cast a ray of glory, 

If peace be in the heart." 



But some one says : "The battle is past, and I am 
defeated. The sin is already in my heart, and 
when I would do good the evil more than masters 
me and leaves me in sad bondage." The same God 
who brought a message of hope to Eve in the midst 
of her despair authorizes me to bring you a mes- 
sage of salvation if you will forsake your sins. 
There is no way you can regain your lost innocence 
but by giving up your sins and accepting pardon 
through Jesus Christ. 

A little child was one day playing with a very 
beautiful and precious vase, when he put his hand 
in through the slender mouth and could not with- 
draw it. He ran to his father for help ; but he, 
too, tried in vain to get it out. They were talking 
of breaking the vase, when the father said, "Make 
one more effort; open your hand and hold your 
fingers out straight and close together as you see 
me doing, and then pull." To the astonishment of 
the family the boy said, "O no, papa, I couldn't 
put out my fingers like that, for if I did, I would 



eve's dialogue with the devil 25 

drop my penny.'' That was the secret of his 
trouble — he had been holding on to his penny all 
the time. Some of you are like him. Yon would 
like to be good; yon want to be a Christian; but 
there is some secret sin that you are cherishing, 
and are not willing to let go. You will never get 
out of the devil's clutches imtil you open wide your 
hand and let go all your sins. As you value your 
peace, your nobility of character, your immortal 
life, give up your sins now and forever ! 



THE GEEAT SINIS^EKS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEE II 

The Fiest Cowaed in the Woeld 

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto 
him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in 
the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I 
hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast 
naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I com- 
manded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man 
said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she 
gave me of the tree, and I did eat. — Genesis ill, 9-12. 

Theee is no accusation that will so quickly 
bring the hot blood of indignation to a man's face 
as to be called a coward. Perhaps it is because 
cowardice is the badge of sin. Sin was the source 
of cowardice in the world. Adam had no fear 
until he was conscious that he had broken God's 
law and brought himself under condemnation. He 
had no fear of the animal world before that. He 
was master over all the beasts of the field. He 
gave them their names, and he was put in posses- 
sion of them. His fear was born of his sin. His 
intelligence, his power to reason, which was in- 
tended to give him control over all living creatures 



THE FIEST COWAED IN THE WOELD 27 

on the earth, was thwarted when his sin made him 
a coward. 

An Arabic legend which has but recently come 
into onr language tells how a noble young lion 
burned with a desire to travel over the world. 

"Why," asked his mother, covering him with 
caresses, "why do you wish to leave me ? Are you 
not happy here? Take care, my child; beyond 
these vast solitudes that make your empire you 
will meet, among other dangers, the most terrible 
of all your enemies — ^that formidable being they 
call man !" 

At last, tired of this warning and taking counsel 
of his courage alone, the young heir to the king- 
dom of beasts took leave of his mother one day, 
saying : "I fear nothing ; I am young and strong ; 
I am as brave as my father was before me ; and if 
I see this creature called man — ^well — ^he shall see 
me!" 

He departed. The first day he perceived an ox 
in his road. "Are you man V he asked. 

"N'o," replied the peaceful creature, chewing 
his cud ; "he of whom you speak is my master ; he 
yokes me to the plow, and if I move too slowly for 
him he urges me on with a steel point with which 
he probes my flesh. It is called a goad, I be- 
lieve." 



28 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

The young lion walked off pensively. The next 
day he saw a horse hobbled in a field. "Are you 
man ?" asked the fierce traveler. 

"O no, my lord," cried the trembling horse. 
"I am his servant ; I carry him on my back. When 
I do not go at the speed he desires he belabors my 
flanks with a sort of star-shaped wheel covered 
with pointed blades." 

Shaking his mane fiercely, the young lion re- 
sumed his course, gnashing his teeth and asking 
himself, in impotent rage, who this being could be 
who made all things submit to his caprice, his 
force, his will ! 

A short time after that he met an animal of 
enormous size who seemed gifted with indomitable 
strength. "This time I cannot be mistaken," he 
said, approaching it. "You are man, are you 
not?" 

"You are indeed wrong. I'm an elephant, and 
he whose name you have just spoken is my lord 
and master. I carry him on my back when he 
hunts the tiger." 

On hearing these words the young lion hurried 
on, more and more perplexed. 

Suddenly a hollow sound, occurring at regular 
intervals, startled him from his reverie. The noise 
seemed to come from the depth of the wood. He 



THE FIRST COWAED IN THE WORLD 29 

advanced and saw a great oak tree, in a clearing, 
tottering to the ground, felled by an instrument in 
the hands of a being whom the lion did not at first 
even notice. Addressing himself to the tree he 
asked : "Are you man ?" 

"i^o," replied the giant oak, sinking slowly 
down; "I am dying of the blows his hands have 
rained upon me." 

Then for the first time the lion deigned to look 
at the being of whom the oak had spoken. But at 
the sight of a creature so paltry and frail he roared 
disdainfully: "How can this be! Is it you my 
mother fears so, and of whom she warned me? 
Was it one of you who dared approach my father ? 
Is it you from whom they have told me to flee V 

"It is I," replied the woodsman, simply. 

"But, you poor creature, you are feebleness it- 
self ! My name alone should make you pale with 
fear, and I could bring you to earth with one blow 
of my paw !" 

!N'ot deigning to respond at first, the man cut a 
deep gash in the trunk of the dying tree, and turn- 
ing to the young lion said : "I seem feeble to you. 
liOok at this oak tree, straight and tall, and full of 
pride in its mighty strength; nevertheless it is 
felled to the earth. It is not my feeble muscle 
with which I conquer you; it is mind! That 



30 THE GREAT SIITNERS OF THE BIBLE 

makes me your master ! You doubt it still ? Put 
your paw in that groove, if you dare," he added, 
pointing to the crack he held open with his ax. 

At the words "if you dare," the young lion 
obeyed without hesitation. The woodsman tore 
away his ax, still wet with the sap of the tree ; and 
the great beast was a prisoner. 

"Well — and now ; am I man ?" asked the woods- 
man, gravely. "Am I your master ?" 

Crushed by such boldness, the lion bent his head 
in silence to acknowledge his defeat. As soon as 
he was liberated he stretched himself on the moss 
and began, sorrowfully, to lick his bleeding paw. 
The man bent over the vanquished beast and 
bathed the wound carefully, then went on his way, 
his ax swung over his shoulder, without saying a 
word or even turning his head. 

The lion followed him with his eyes until he was 
lost to sight. Filled with shame, his confidence in 
his power and courage shaken, two great tears 
dimmed his eyes, and raising himself wearily he 
made his way slowly back to the desert. "From 
that day," says the old legend, "a lion has known 
it is useless to attack a brave man." 
'^ But man's supremacy over the universe was 
lost by his sin, and he is only slowly winning it 
back as he is escaping from the cruel bondage of 



THE FIBST COWARD 11!^^ THE WORLD 31 

iniquity, which made him first a coward and has 
held him since a slave. 

The first result of Adam^s sin was that it made 
him fear to meet God. Before that he had talked 
with God face to face. His supreme joy was in 
the perfect freedom and welcome which he felt in 
the divine presence. He had done always those 
things which were pleasing to God, and he rejoiced 
in the sunshine of God's pleasure. But the mo- 
ment he has sinned against God he begins, cow- 
ardly, to hide himself — an indication of the un- 
wisdom which comes to us through sin, as God 
was the only One who could forgive him, and thus 
bring peace to his heart. The wise thing would 
have been for Adam to go searching after God, 
crying aloud through the trees of the garden, "My 
God, I have sinned against thee ! Where art thou V^ 
But his sin drives him into doing just the opposite 
of that. He foolishly tries to hide himself from 
God, hoping to escape the results of his sin. And 
so it is not Adam seeking after God, but it is God 
who searches after Adam, and calls aloud, "Adam, 
where art thou?" 

Are there any here who are trying to hide from 
God ? Your sins have made you a coward — ^you 
dare not lift your shamed eyes into the light of 
his face — so you are seeking to cover up your 



6^Z THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

transgressions and find some escape from jour 
misery in that way. But there is no escape by 
covering up sin. David found sin thus covered to 
be like '^a fire in his bones/' and many a modern 
sinner finds himself a smothered volcano of burn- 
ing conscience, which he vainly tries to crush out. 
We cannot escape from the law of God; neither 
can we escape from his questioning. David 
thought this matter all out, and said: ^'There is 
not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou 
knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind 
and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such 
knowledge is too wonderful for me ; it is high, I 
cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from 
thy Spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy pres- 
ence ? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : 
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in 
the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy 
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. 
If I say. Surely the darkness shall cover me ; even 
the night shall be light about me. Yea, the dark- 
ness hideth not from thee ; but the night shineth as 
the day : the darkness and the light are both alike 
to thee." 

I think many people do not appreciate that the 
very worst thing sin ever does for us is to bring 



THE FIRST COWAED IN" THE WORLD 33 

about this separation of the soul from God. Adam 
no longer enjoyed the presence of God. Instead of 
the feeling of a son for his father, he became a 
vagabond in feeling before a word had been said 
to him by way of punishment of his sin. Sin 
carries with it the pledge of its own punishment. 
The real vagabondage of sin begins the moment it 
is committed, in the sense of separation from God. 
The deepest sinners, and those who are in the 
greatest danger of eternal disaster, are not always 
those whose sins bring them under the shame and 
disgrace of their fellow-men. Surely the New 
Testament idea of it, as set forth by Christ him- 
self, is that the worst sinner in the world is the in- 
telligent and, it may be, refined and cultured man 
or woman who lives without God, and whose life 
of indifference and selfishness is a perpetual de- 
fiance to God. Christ said that the publican and 
the harlot were more likely to press into the king- 
dom of God and be saved than these self-sufficient 
people who have washed the outside of the platter 
but whose hearts give him no love and no devotion. 
Think for a moment what that means: that the 
drunkard, or the outbreaking and disgraced sinner 
whose name is pilloried by social condemnation, is 
more likely to be saved than some man, like your- 
self, who lives prudently and carefully so far as 



34 THE GREAT SIITiq^ERS OF THE BIBLE 

the ordinary requirements of society are concerned, 
but lives prayerless and selfish, refusing to give to 
God affection and service ; that a poor, lost woman 
of the street has more chance of salvation than 
many a woman who would draw back her skirts 
from the contamination of her touch, but who sins 
against light and intelligence and hardens her 
heart against the wealth of God's love poured into 
her home and her life. 

Dr. Horton says that the position of such peo- 
ple is the same as that of Lucifer, son of the morn- 
ing, who fell from heaven because he was to him- 
self a god. Such a man is the supreme sinner 
against God. And the awful fact is that such sin- 
ners are so common in our day, and so difiicult to 
reach with the plain and simple truth of God's 
word. I long to do my whole duty by any of you 
so situated who hear me at this hour. I do not 
bring against you any railing accusation. I do not 
speak in the spirit of accusation, but with a broth- 
er's hand draw aside the fig-leaf apron of excuses 
you are making, and seek, for your soul's sake, to 
show you the nakedness of your sin before God. 
You have not lifted your club against your broth- 
er, like Cain; you have not fallen into drunken- 
ness, like !N'oah ; nor lost the glory of your strength 
through lust, like Samson; but, like Adam, you 



THE FIRST COWARD IH THE WORLD 35 

have yielded to tlie seductive temptations of a sin 
that has separated you from God. You may still 
say your prayers, but they have lost their meaning. 
There is in them no conscious approach of your 
soul toward God in loving confidence and trust. 
In your better moments, when conscience has the 
right of way, you know yourself for what you are 
— a sinner shrinking from the condemnation im- 
pending because of transgression. 

There is just one hope, and that is to stop hiding 
and come back, in the name of Jesus Christ, to the 
God against whom you have sinned. E'one plead 
his name in vain, and no other name has power to 
cancel your debt ; "for he hath made him to be sin 
for us, who knew no sin.'' And we have the prom- 
ise that, "if we confess our sins," instead of cover- 
ing them, "he is faithful and just to forgive us our 
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 
The way of confession is the way of salvation. 

A young civil engineer of western Kentucky, 
who assisted his father in his business of railroad 
prospecting and surveying, had contracted intem- 
perate habits. His work from place to place threw 
him into the society of loose men much more than 
his father seemed to be aware of, and being a gen- 
erous, convivial fellow, he paid for his popularity 
by copying their indulgences. 



Mf^ 



^■^^ ;2/w,-'--.^- 



.'t/trn/-/', 



36 THE GREAT SINNEES 01/ THE BIBLE 

His dangerous appetite and his occasional fits 
of dissipation were so shrewdly concealed that his 
parents were kept in ignorance of them for two 
years — until he was twenty years old. They were 
worthy people and constant churchgoers, the father 
being choir leader and the mother a soprano singer. 

Once, while the young man was employed on a 
section of road forty miles from home, it became 
necessary to "lie over'' from Thursday noon till 
Monday. His father would be detained till Satur- 
day, reaching home in time for the choir rehearsal, 
but the son returned at once and went to a liquor 
saloon to commence a three days' "spree." 

The saloon keeper understood his case too well, 
and kept him hidden in his own apartments. 
When his father returned, expecting to find the 
boy at home, a surprise awaited him. Trouble 
began when the question, "Where's Harry?" in- 
formed the startled mother that he was missing. 

For the Sunday evening service she was to sing 
a solo, and by special request — because she sang it 
so well — her selection w^as to be the hymn, "Where 
Is My Wandering Boy ?" 

It seemed to her impossible to perform her prom- 
ise under the circumstances; and when, on Sun- 
day morning, a policeman found Harry, the cer- 
tainty was no more comforting than the suspense 



THE FIRST COWARD IN THE WORLD 37 

had been; but she was advised that he would be 
^'all right to-morrow morning," and that she would 
better not see him until he "sobered up." 

Toward night Harry began to come to himself. 
His father had hired a man to stay with him and 
see to his recovery, and when he learned that his 
mother had been told of his plight, the information 
cut him to the heart and helped to sober him. 

When the bells rang he announced his determi- 
nation to go to church. He knew nothing of the 
evening program. He was still in his working 
clothes, but no reasoning could dissuade him, and 
his attendant, after making him as presentable as 
possible, went with him to the service. 

Entering early by a side door, they found seats 
in a secluded corner, but not far from the pulpit 
and the organ. The house filled, and after the 
usual succession of prayer, anthem, and sermon the 
time for the solo came. It was probably the first 
time in that church that a mother had ever sung 
out of her own soul's distress : 

"Oh, where is my wandering boy to-night, 
The child of my love and care?" 

Every word was to her own heart a cruel stab. 
The great audience caught the feeling of the song, 
but there was one heart as near to breaking as her 
own. She sibig the last stanza, 

Ou 



38 THE GEEAT SINIsTEES OF THE BIBLE 

"Go for my wandering boy to-night, 
Go search for him where you will, 

But bring him to me with all his blight, 
And tell him I love him still. 

Oh, where is my wandering boy?" 

Just then a young man in a woolen shirt and 
corduroy trousers and jacket made his way down 
the aisle to the choir stairs with outstretched arms, 
and, sobbing like a child, exclaimed, "Here I am, 
mother V^ 

The mother ran down the steps and folded him 
in her arms. The astonished organist, quick to 
take in the meaning of the scene, pulled out all his 
stops and played "Old Hundred" — "Praise God, 
from whom all blessings flow." The congregation, 
with their hundreds of voices, joined in the great 
doxology, while the father, the pastor, and the 
friends of the returned prodigal stood by him with 
moist eyes and welcoming hands. 

The wayward boy ended his wanderings then 
and there. That moment was a consecration and 
the beginning of a life of sobriety and Christian 
usefulness. 

Some wanderers may be here to-night. Will 
you not openly confess Christ as your Saviour? 
To-day is the day of salvation ! 



THE sijs^i^eb cross-examined 39 



CHAPTEE III 

The Sinner Cross-examined 

Why is thy countenance tsdlenl— Genesis iv, 6. 

God is the great Questioner. He alone in all 
the universe has at once the right and the power 
to interrogate every intelligent soul to the very 
depths of its thought and being. Every man en- 
tering upon any course of conduct should take into 
consideration the fact that it will not go unques- 
tioned. He may defy or elude the questioning of 
his fellow-men, but he cannot put aside the heart- 
searching inquiries that will come from God. 
Adam hid in the garden of Eden and sought to 
shelter himself from the discovery of his sin, but 
through the trees of his despoiled paradise there 
came the ringing question, "Adam, where art 
thou ?'' The question was personal, and he had no 
trouble in finding out who was intended. When 
Elijah had fled away in cowardice from the wrath 
of Jezebel, and had for a time forgotten his mis- 
sion and his work, hiding in the cave in the moun- 
tains, the voice of Him who had called him to be a 



40 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

prophet sought him out with the probing question : 
''What doest thou here, Elijah?" That was a 
question which could not be put aside, and which 
had to be answered. When Paul was on his way 
to Damascus, full of hate and bigotry, and was 
suddenly surrounded and overwhelmed by the 
glare of that light in which the noonday glory 
seemed insignificant, he was met by the appeal 
from the crucified but now risen Christ, "Why 
persecutest thou me ?" Paul had authority — 
reaching to dungeon and rack and cross — over the 
disciples of Jesus, but the Christ himself he could 
not put aside, and his question had to be answered. 
Cain was no exception to this rule. He had, at the 
point where our text occurs, done no overt act of 
enmity against his brother. He had lifted no club 
to strike him, and doubtless in his heart no pur- 
pose had yet formed to destroy the life of Abel. 
But God, who sees and judges the thoughts of men, 
beholds the falling countenance and the bitter 
envy that is behind it, and faces Cain with a ques- 
tion that goes to the root of his sin when he asks : 
''Why art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance 
fallen f' 

Depend upon it, we shall, each of us, have to 
meet the same kind of questionings. We are not 
our own, We do not belong to a lawless world. 



THE SINNER CROSS-EXAMINED 41 

We are not tlie children of chaos. We are the 
creation of infinite wisdom and love, capable of 
lofty deeds, and we cannot recklessly throw away 
onr splendid inheritance, dragging ourselves in 
the gutter of moral and spiritual bankruptcy, 
without facing heart-searching questions from the 
very throne of God. How merciful it is that the 
path to ruin is thus made thorny and hard ! We 
quote the proverb, ^'The way of the transgressor is 
hard," many times with a tone of regret, as though 
it were a hard saying and an undesirable fact, but 
there is nothing which more plainly shows the love 
and merciful provision of God. We should be 
grateful that it is not easy to do wrong and keep 
on doing it. As Christ said to Paul, "It is hard 
for thee to kick against the pricks," so God has 
set many a pricking thorn in the path that leads 
away from peace into the darkness of sin. Happy 
are they who regard these merciful warnings ! 

The fact that Abel's sacrifice was accepted while 
Cain's was rejected is by no means proof that Abel 
was a pet of the divine heart while there was prej- 
udice against Cain. While the sacrifices seem 
similar in many ways, the spirit of the two men 
made them as different as light and darkness. 
Cain brought his offering, as a matter of form or 
ceremony, out of a bad and wicked life. His 



42 THE GREAT SII^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

heart and conduct were alike evil. He did not 
bring his offering in the spirit of the poor publi- 
can, who smote upon his breast and said, "God be 
merciful to me a sinner," but rather as a matter 
of religious display. As Joseph Parker says, Cain 
was the sort of a churchgoer who could go to church 
and make his offering and then be in a spirit to kill 
his brother as soon as church was over. I fear we 
have much of that sort of churchgoing yet; men 
who attend the public worship, unite in its songs 
of praise, giving outward deference, as Cain did, 
to the worship of God, who yet go away to politics 
or business or social engagements on Monday with 
nothing in their spirit or conduct to indicate that 
their character has in any way been affected by the 
Sunday's service. To join in public worship on 
Sunday and go from that to cheat in business, or 
lie in politics, or be revengeful in social life on 
week days, is to reincarnate the spirit of Cain in 
modern life. 

Abel's worship was very different. He was a 
good man not alone on days of sacrifice offering, 
but on all days of the week. He came to the wor- 
ship in humility, bringing the very best of his 
flocks as a sacrifice for his sins. The man who 
brings only formal service to God does not bring 
the best, but the poorest, of all his possessions. 



THE SINl^EE CKOSS-EXAMINED 43 

Abel brought the best he had in a grateful and 
loving spirit. Cain, in a spirit of vulgar display, 
brought the poorest he had, with a greedy, selfish 
heart behind it. 

We ought not to count it such a hard thing to 
give God our love and affection, for from our 
babyhood it has been the only gold that would pass 
in the highest exchange. What true mother would 
compare for a moment the most insignificant gift 
which came from a child obedient and loving with 
the rich gift of another that was flung with con- 
tempt from a wicked, willful heart ? I recently 
saw a company of children out gathering wild 
flowers, when suddenly one of the little flock pro- 
posed that each of them should gather a bouquet 
for mother. They set about it with a will. The 
older children brought home- very respectable bou- 
quets, made up of a diversity of flowers, and they 
were received with smiles of appreciation, for love 
was in them all ; but the baby had plucked a few 
ragged pieces of clover that had seen their best 
days, and now and then a weed that his chubby 
fingers could break, and brought the ugly little 
bunch of half-withered plants, with a smile of 
heavenly innocence and love that illuminated his 
beaming face, exclaiming, "Baby gathered the 
f'owers for muvver !" And I noticed that, while 



44 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

all the bouquets were received and cared for, those 
the mother seemed to appreciate most and treasure 
longest the bady's faded clover and worthless 
weeds. He had brought the very best he could. 
'No wonder that God, who made a father's and 
a mother's love, and whose heart is the center of 
every perfect feeling of sympathetic relationship, 
rejoices in him who brings his offerings with the 
loving spirit of a son. 

Cain's spirit is evidenced by the effect produced 
upon him by the divine refusal to accept his offer- 
ing and the appreciation of Abel's sacrifice. He 
was not wounded at the heart because his own of- 
fering did not please God; he was too selfishly 
indifferent to the divine favor for that; but the 
thing that rankled in his bosom was that Abel was 
marked for approval, while he, the pretentious and 
self-sufficient Cain, was discounted. This was the 
cause of his anger, and this it was that made his 
countenance fall into the ugliness of envy and hate. 

How tenderly God reasoned with him, remind- 
ing him that the path of religious prosperity and 
happiness was as wide open to him as it was to 
Abe], and that if he would turn over a new leaf 
and begin to do well, bringing his offering out of 
a good heart and in a right spirit, he, too, would be 
accepted. But the other alternative was put just 



THE SINHEB CBOSS-EXAMIiSTED 45 

as clearly : that if he continued to do wrong, and 
nurtured in his heart the envious, revengeful spirit 
which now possessed him, still greater sin waited 
at the door in the near future. 

The word translated in our version ^^lieth" is a 
very strong, vital word, which is well translated 
^'coucheth" in the revised version. There it reads : 
"Sin coucheth at the door." So Cain did not go on 
to do murder without warning. If at the voice of 
God he had turned about then, with sincere re- 
pentance, how different would have been the story ! 
But he brooded over Abel's happiness and success 
until they seemed to be the cause of the sharp prod- 
dings of his own wicked conscience. So, when at 
last, in a sudden outburst of passion, he rose up 
and slew his brother, his awful sin was the wild 
beast which God had warned him was couching at 
the door of the envy and anger which he cherished 
on the day his sacrifice was rejected. 

I doubt not this is just the earnest, heart-search- 
ing message needed by some of you who are listen- 
ing to me. Your sin is in its beginning ; it has not 
yet entered upon the open, outbreaking, disgrace- 
ful epoch of its history. It is as yet an evil picture 
in the imagination, only the shadow of a purpose 
that haunts you like a specter in your worst hours. 
In your better moods you thrust it aside for the 



4:6 THE GREAT SII^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

devil that it is, and will not admit it to be a pos- 
sibility. But it returns again and again, and every 
time the temptation has added force. There is a 
demonlike attraction in sin. While v^e revolt 
against it and look back upon it with remorse, yet 
every time it is yielded to, or even considered in 
the secret chambers of the imagination as a possi- 
bility, it lures the soul with ever-increasing, mag- 
netic force. The only wise course is to thrust the 
sin aside at first, by the help of God. He is as 
willing to give us power to rule over it and put it 
under our feet as he was to give power to Cain, 
who rejected the divine aid, or to Abel, who ac- 
cepted it. 

It seems to me no more bitter ingredient can 
enter into the poisoned cup of sin, which the un- 
repenting sinner is forced to drink down to the 
dregs, than the conviction that the final disaster 
which overthrew the life was a wild beast which 
the sinner himself chained at his door and fattened 
for his own destruction. You could hardly believe 
the story of the folly of a man who would chain a 
fierce, bloodthirsty tiger at his own door, ready 
to tear him in pieces when he should pass out from 
his home; and yet God says in this warning to 
Cain that that is exactly what a man does who 
persists in purposing and doing evil: he is chain- 



THE SINNER CROSS-EXAMINED 47 

ing at the door of to-morrow or the day after a still 
greater sin, which will rend him in pieces. His 
greed and selfishness and envious anger seemed to 
Cain, no doubt, very harmless kinds of sins, as 
they doubtless seem to some of you. He did not 
see that lying at the door, only a few days away, 
was murder, with its haggard face and assassin- 
like fingers. Would to God I had the power to 
stand before any man or woman here who has a 
rotten spot of self-indulgence, or greed, or rankling 
envy, growing in the soul, and could open your 
eyes to show you at the door of the future the hor- 
rid sin into which this will grow, and the possible 
shame and ruin to which it may bring your un- 
happy soul! If I could do that, there would be 
many who would turn this very hour from a life 
of evil to a life of doing well. 

Remember, God does not ask impossible things 
of us. In its great essentials the Christian life is 
a very simple thing. It is to cease to do evil and 
begin to do well, and that not in your own strength. 
Pardon waits for you if, with the humility and 
simple-heartedness of Abel, you wiU turn away 
from your sin and accept the divine aid for a pure 
and upright life. You do not need to bring the 
firstling of the flock to be slain upon an earthly 
altar, for Christ has become "the Lamb of God that 



X 



48 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

taketh away the sin of the world/' His blood has 
made atonement for you. You can bring the best 
you have : your open confession, your humble serv- 
ice, your loving obedience. Such a decision would 
turn many a Cain-life, with its approaching doom, 
into an Abel-life, brightening in the smile of God, 
which illuminates a path that will shine brighter 
and brighter unto the perfect day. 



I 



NOAH^ AND THE TRAGIC STOBY 



49 



CHAPTEK IV 

XOAH, AITD THE TrAGIC StORY OF THE MeIT 

Who Built the Ark 

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come 
before me; for the earth is filled with violence through 
them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 
Make thee an ark.— Genesis vi, 13, 14. 

And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy 
house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before 
me in this generation.— Gewests vii, 1. 

And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his 
sons' wives with him, into the ark.— Genesis vii, 7. 

And the Lord shut him in.— 6renests vii, 16. 

And every living substance was destroyed which was 
upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and 
the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and 
they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only re- 
mained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.— 
Genesis vii, 23. 

The warnings of the Bible are as full of mercy 
as its invitations and its promises. God always 
deals righteously with his children. The way of sin 
is made hard, and dark, and full of forebodings, 
while the "path of the just is as a shining light, 
that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 



50 THE GREAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

Men do not come to the end of a sinful way with- 
out being warned of the result. Men who do not 
like the wages of sin that they are receiving must 
remember that God has declared plainly in his 
word that "the wages of sin is death.'' When God 
had determined on the destruction of the world by 
the flood he gave notice of it for a hundred and 
twenty years. Noah was his preacher of right- 
eousness, and there was abundant opportunity for 
repentance and salvation. If the people of the 
antediluvian world had heard the message of ISToah 
with the earnest care given to the message of 
Jonah by the wicked people of l^ineveh, there can 
be no doubt that the destructive flood never would 
have occurred. The penitent prayer of the people 
would have turned aside the sentence of doom. 

N"oah is usually supposed to have been a very 
unsuccessful preacher, and yet we must not make 
little of the fact that he saved the people who knew 
him best. His wife, his sons, and their families, 
all came with him into the ark. He did better 
than Lot, for he was not able to take his wife with 
him, and lost a great share of his own family. 
There is something genuine about a man's religion 
when he wins to firm faith in God all the people 
of his own household. It must have been a great 
sorrow to l^oah that he was not able to win his 



51 



acquaintances, especially the hundreds, and pos- 
sibly thousands, who must have wrought under his 
direction in constructing the great ark which God 
had commanded him to build. It is well for us 
to reflect that Grod expects every one of us who 
have named the name of Christ to be a preacher of 
righteousness. First of all, we are to be such evan- 
gelists in our own homes. It is a terrible thing for 
Christians to be indifferent or careless about the 
conversion of their own children. If the children 
are to grow up prayerful, and reverent, and spir- 
itual, they must become so very largely through 
the fidelity of the parents. Dr. ISTorman Macleod 
says that he shall never forget the impression 
made upon him, during the first year of his min- 
istry, by a mechanic whom he had visited and on 
whom he had urged the paramount duty of family 
prayer. Months passed away, when one day this 
same mechanic entered his study, bursting into 
tears as he said: "You remember that girl, sir? 
She was my only child. She died suddenly this 
morning. She has gone, I hope, to Grod ; but, if so, 
she can tell him, what now breaks my heart, that 
she never heard a prayer in her father's house or 
from her father's lips ! 0, that she were with me 
but for one day again ! " Let us not plant thorns 
in our pillows for after years by living worldly, 



52 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

prajerless lives in the presence of those who have 
a right to look to us for guidance and example. 

Outside our o^vn households there are those that 
come in close contact v^ith us in a business or social 
way to whom we may be the preacher of righteous- 
ness more effectively than anybody else. A min- 
ister preaching in a strange place had laid empha- 
sis on the fact that every Christian, however hum- 
ble, or poor, or busy, can do some personal work 
for Christ if he be only willing. After the lec- 
ture a poor woman rushed up to him and said, half 
indignantly : 

''What can I do ? I am a poor widow with ^ve 
children to support, and I have to work night and 
day to take care of my family. How can I find 
time to go and speak to anyone about Christ ?" 

"Does the milkman call at your house early in 
the morning?" 

"Of course he does.'' 

"Does the baker follow him ?" 

"Why, yes, to be sure he does." 

"Does the butcher once or twice a week visit 
you?" 

"Yes," was the curt reply, and the woman, her 
face flushed with excitement and apparent vexa- 
tion, flew away. 

Two years after the same minister spoke in the 



TSTOAII^ AND THE TRAGIC STORY 53 

same place. After the service a woman asked 
him: 

^'Do you know me ?" 

":n'o." 

"Well, I am the person who was vexed with you, 
two years ago, when you asked me whether the 
milkman and baker and butcher visited me. But 
I went home to think and pray, and God helped 
me to do my duty. I now have to tell you that, 
through my humble efforts, five persons have been 
led to the Saviour, and they are all consistent 
working members of the church." 

Professional men often have opportunities such 
as never come to a preacher in the pulpit to carry 
heaven's message of mercy to a needy soul. Dr. J. 
M. Buckley relates an incident, which recently 
occurred in 'New York city, which shows how such 
opportunities come sometimes to physicians. A 
young woman of keenest intellect, highly accom- 
plished, had all her life sat under the teaching of 
so-called liberal ministers who have nothing to say 
except that evangelical Christianity is an outworn 
superstition. She accepted their views, that Christ 
was a mere man and that a future life is probable, 
but not certain. She lived on in this way until 
there came a day when she was taken ill. At first 
there was no occasion for alarm, yet she became 



54 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

strangely weak as one day followed another. Her 
physicians were baffled and her devoted parents 
terrified. Conscious of the changes, and affected 
by the anxiety of others which it was impossible 
for them to conceal, the pastor who had lulled her 
to sleep with his skepticism concerning experimen- 
tal religion called to converse with her about a 
musical performance which he had attended and 
which he much regretted that she could not have 
enjoyed. Suddenly she said to him: "I believe 
that I shall die. Cannot you tell me something to 
help me meet my fate V^ All her blind guide could 
say to her was: '^This is the time to test your 
philosophy; we must all die; everyone that e^er 
lived has had to pass through the same valley. It 
is as natural to die as to live. Be courageous ; be 
strong." There was no response from her, but 
gathering from his remarks that her apprehensions 
were just, a deep horror settled upon her face, and 
she said, "Where shall I go V "That," said he, 
"no one knows ; we can form no idea of that except 
by dying." JSTow the young l^dy^s physician was a 
Christian, and as he saw the nameless dread in her 
countenance, he thought within himself: "Have I 
nothing to say ? Can I see her drift unhelped to 
meet her fate ?" And, swayed by an impulse which 
stimulated his memory, he whispered to her the 



-a 



NOAH^ AND THE TKAGIC STOEY 55 

beautiful prayers and words of promise which had 
often fallen upon his ears, watching her as one 
might watch the effect of a cordial upon the faint- 
ing. Her eye brightened a little, but not till he 
came to the words, ^'God so loved the world that he 
gave his only begotten Son," and, "This is a faith- 
ful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," 
and, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast 
out," did she speak ; then she pressed his hand and 
said, "Doctor, I thank you; I will trust that." 
What an opportunity for that physician! How 
well worth a lifetime of work the privilege of that 
one deed of Christian love ! 

If we could only realize the vast treasure at 
stake, how much more enthusiasm and devotion we 
should put into our search after immortal souls and 
into our efforts to win them from sin. If we would 
only give ourselves to saving souls with even the 
enthusiasm that men use about far less important 
worldly matters, great results would speedily be 
shown. A London literary man who is seeking 
after rare books and manuscripts happened to en- 
ter a little tobacconist's shop, in the East End of 
London, in order to ask his way to a street in the 
neighborhood. He was just addressing his request 
to the elderly Jewess who was in charge of the 



56 THE GREAT SINN^ERS OF THE BIBLE 

establishment, when he saw, to his horror, that she 
was tearing the pages from a black letter volume 
which lay on her lap, in order to wrap therein a 
few ounces of tobacco which she was weighing out 
in readiness for her customers. He snatched the 
volume from her hand in a frenzy of apprehension, 
and found that it was The Good Huswife s Jewell, 
a very rare collection of recipes published in the 
reign of Elizabeth. With admirable presence of 
mind he offered a shilling for the book, and the 
offer was eagerly accepted. Three leaves were 
missing, and the tobacconist, who explained that 
she had bought the treasure from a peddler of waste 
paper, fortunately remembered the names of the 
customers who had carried them off wrapped round 
their tobacco. The literary man followed up each 
leaf until he found it. The fly leaf had a narrow 
escape, as the laboring man into whose possession 
it had fallen had already twisted it to make a 
lighter for his pipe, and was reaching it toward the 
fire when the gentleman entered his humble home. 
The Good Huswife's Jewell is now complete, and 
its rescuer from oblivion is said to be one of the 
happiest men in London. 

Surely the follower of Jesus Christ, who has 
come to know in his own heart the power of Christ 
to forgive sins, ought to seek for immortal souls 



NOAH^ AND THE TRAGIC STORY 57 

that are perishing in ignorance and sin with as 
much enthusiasm and earnestness as is shown by 
a searcher after rare books ; and yet such a passion 
for souls on the part of every Christian in this 
church would revolutionize the city and cause the 
people to say of us, as was said of Paul and his 
friends when they came to Ephesus, "They that 
turn the world upside down have come hither." 

And yet, despite all we can do, some will refuse 
to heed the Gospel; and in the presence of good 
example, and the salvation of others, will go on in 
sin and be lost. It seems very strange to us that 
the very men who lived in Noah's community, who 
saw his pure and righteous life, who heard his wit- 
ness to the warning which God had given, who 
even worked for him in building the ark, should 
yet have failed to turn to God in repentance and 
seek their own salvation. Yet, before we con- 
demn these as the greatest sinners in the world, it 
is well to ask if people are not doing the same thing 
to-day. These men had been preached to, but so 
have you. Some of you who hear this word to- 
night have attended public worship, more or 
less frequently, all your lives. You have heard 
many a sermon which had in it sufficient Gospel 
truth to make you know your sin and to point out 
Christ as your Saviour. It will not be possible for 



68 THE GEEAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

you to stand up at last and say, "I might have been 
saved, but nobody honestly preached me the Gos- 
pel/' You have heard the Gospel again and again, 
and you must give an account for it. 

These people had been prayed for. !N'oah was a 
man of the type of Abraham, who, wherever he 
went, built an altar unto the Lord. They must 
have known that they were the objects of l^oah's 
prayers, and yet they hardened their hearts against 
them, and would not accept ISToah's God. Who of 
you has not been the object of earnest and sincere 
prayer on the part of Christian people ? Some of 
you have been prayed for by a Christian father, or 
nj other, and by those who are nearest to you in 
love and sympathy ; and in answer to their prayers 
the Holy Spirit has again and again striven with 
your heart, and yet you have resisted him. These 
prayers you must give an account for. 

Again, these people, many of them, had worked 
for and with a thoroughly good man. They had 
seen the Gospel in its strongest presentation — in- 
carnated in the life of an honest, sincere man. 
But have you never known any Christians ? There 
may be times when you are ready to sneer and be 
cynical about the conduct of some church members, 
yet there is not one of you but has known some 
earnest, faithful souls whose transfigured lives 



ITOAII^ AND THE TRAGIC STORY 59 

have put your own life "under condemnation, and 
you have said in your inmost soul, "O that I were 
as genuine and holy in my motives and purposes 
and life as that man, or that woman !" You must 
give an account for the testimony of such lives. 

And the reasons that kept these people from 
accepting Noah's message were, no doubt, the same 
sort of reasons that are keeping some of you from 
salvation. A great many were kept from joining 
'Noah in a life of prayer because of the delight 
which they took in worldly things. The present 
life of the passions and the appetites was so near 
and so noisy that they gave themselves up to it and 
silenced the voice of conscience, which sought to 
tell them of the demands of the higher life of the 
soul. Is that not your trouble ? You will not be 
smitten down by the paw of a lion, but your soul 
will be eaten up of moths. In eating and drinking, 
in the temporary things of life, you fritter away 
your interest and refuse to give ear to your soul, 
that hungers for worship and faith and a life of 
noble self-denial. 

No doubt then, as now, procrastination was the 
cause of the destruction of many. The danger 
did not seem to be immediate, and so they post- 
poned preparation. "Time enough yet," they said, 
until the last day of the hundred and twenty years 



60 THE GBEAT SIITNEES OF THE BIBLE 

had passed, and lN"oah, and every man and woman 
he could persuade to go with him, had gone into 
the ark, where the Lord shut him in, and they were 
shut out. Will you make that fatal mistake ? You 
are in the same current. You are putting off your 
return to God. You are putting off the question 
of your conversion, of your immortal salvation, to 
some indefinite time in the future. Do not, I beg 
you, continue in so unwise a course. Every day of 
procrastination makes it easier to continue on the 
fatal way. Rouse yourself now to hear the word 
of wisdom ! "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise 
from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." 
The door will not always stand open. You are in 
danger of its being shut at any time. Enter in 
while it is still ajar, with welcome and mercy for 
you. 



NOAH^S DRUNKENNESS 61 



CHAPTEE Y 

;N"oah''s Deunkenness — The Peeil of the 
Wineglass 

And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted 
a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; 
and he was uncovered within his tent.— Genesis ix, 20-21. 

We hear a great deal about the temptations of 
yoiitli, and not much about the temptations that 
beset middle-aged people and those who are still 
farther along in the way of their life history. Yet 
every little while we hear of some man who has 
lived through youth and early manhood uprightly, 
with good habits, winning respect and honor on 
all sides, but who as he has grown older seems to 
have lost the pressure of restraint which once held 
him in check from evil ways, and shocks and 
astonishes the community by falling into outbreak- 
ing and disgraceful sin. It is not unfrequently 
the case that such disaster is connected with the sin 
of drunkenness. I have myself kno^vn more than 
one man who reached the age of fifty years a total 

abstainer, and then, presuming on the power of 
5 



62 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

will to resist undue seduction from strong drink, 
and persuaded perhaps in his own mind to believe 
that some stimulant would be valuable for his 
health, has been led to begin a course of moderate 
drinking which has ended in a few years in drunk- 
enness and debauch. Noah seems to have been a 
case of that sort. All his early life was pure and 
strong. He was a man of upright . conversation 
and of wholesome and noble conduct. He pleased 
God and was a preacher of righteousness for a 
hundred and twenty years. And yet, after God's 
signal interposition in his behalf in the preparation 
of the ark for his salvation, when once again the 
world, is before him, with the rainbow of mercy 
and promise spanning the heavens above him, he 
falls under the temptation of the wineciip and is 
seen in a drunken debauch which shames his fam- 
ily and ends in the most serious consequences to 
some that are dear to him. The truth is that the 
only safe course for young or old is total absti- 
nence from strong drink. The glass of water may 
not bring so suddenly the sparkle to the eye and 
the color to the cheek as does the glass of wine, but, 
on the other hand, it never brings down a man's 
gray hairs in disgrace to a dishonored grave. EUa 
Wheeler Wilcox sings a tale of a debate between 
these two glasses: 



NOAH^S DRUNKENNESS 63 

"There sat two glasses, filled to the brim, 
On a rich man's table, rim to rim; 
One was ruddy, and red as blood. 
And one was clear as the crystal flood. 

"Said the glass of wine to his paler brother, 

'Let us tell tales of the past to each other. 

I can tell of banquet, and revel, and mirth, 

Where I was king, for I ruled in might. 

And the proudest and grandest souls on earth 

Fell under my touch as though struck with blight. 

From the heads of kings I have torn the crown; 

From the height of fame I have torn men down; 

I have blighted many an honored name; 

I have taken virtue and given shame; 

I have tempted youth with a sip, a taste, 

Which has made his future a barren waste. 

Far greater than any king am I, 

Or than any army beneath the sky; 

I have made the arm of the driver fail 

And sent the train from the iron rail; 

I have made good ships go down at sea, 

And the shrieks of the lost were sweet to me; 

For they said, "Behold, how great you be! 

Fame, strength, wealth, genius, before you fall, 

And your might and power are over all." 

Ho! ho! pale brother,' laughed the wine, 

*Oan you boast of deeds as great as mine?' 

"Said the water glass: *I cannot boast 

Of a king dethroned, or a murdered host; 

But I can tell of hearts that were sad 

By my crystal drops made light and glad; 

Of thirst that I've quenched, and brows I have laved; 

Of hands I have cooled, and souls I have saved. 



64 THE GREAT SIITNEES OF THE BIBLE 

I have leaped through the valley, dashed down the moun- 
tain, 

Slept in the sunshine, and dripped from the fountain; 

I have burst my cloud fetters and dropped from the sky, 

And everywhere gladdened the landscape and eye. 

I have eased the hot forehead of fever and pain, 

I have made the parched meadows grow fertile with 
grain; 

I can tell of the powerful wheel of the mill 

That ground out the flour and turned at my will; 

I can tell of manhood, debased by you. 

That I have uplifted and crowned anew. 

I cheer, I help, I strengthen and aid, 

I gladden the heart of man and maid; 

I set the chained wine-captive free. 

And all are the better for knowing me.* 

"These are the tales they told each other, 
The glass of wine and its paler brother, 
As they sat together, filled to the brim. 
On a rich man's table, rim to rim." 

If I speak to any man or woman who is without 
settled principles of total abstinence from strong 
drink, T would like to appeal to you as »Joshua did 
at Shechem, "Choose you this day whom ye will 
serve. '^ 

The war between the United States and Spain 
has given us many striking illustrations of the 
peril of strong drink. The American navy, which 
in the course of a few months has put itself in the 
leading place among the navies of the world for 



NOAH^S DRUNKENNESS 65 

gunnery and skill and endurance and courage, 
superiority of every sort, is the one branch of the 
United States public service where intoxicating 
liquors are rigidly prohibited. The fact is that we 
had been getting ready to do miracles with our 
navy by over half a century of growing sobriety. 
In 1831 Congress took an advance step by pro- 
viding that all in the navy who voluntarily relin- 
quished their regular ration of liquor should be 
paid six cents a day extra. In 1842 the ration was 
cut down to one gill, but the alternative of half a 
pint of wine was added, and if a sailor did not use 
it, he was allowed three cents a day. The first year 
of the civil war brought a greatly increased naval 
force and increased trouble from strong drink. 
Moral sentiment had progressed, too. In July, 
1862, CongTCSS revolutionized the American navy 
by passing the historic law providing : "That from 
and after the first day of September, 1862, the 
spirit ration in the navy of the United States shall 
forever cease, and thereafter no distilled spiritu- 
ous liquors shall be admitted on board of vessels of 
war, except as medical stores, and upon the order 
and under the control of the medical officers of 
such vessels, and to be used only for medical pur- 
poses. From and after the first day of September 
next therQ shall be allowed and paid to each person 



6d the GEEAT SIIfNERS OF THE BIBLE 

in the navy, now entitled to the spirit ration, ^ve 
cents per day in commutation and lien thereof, 
which shall be in addition to the present pay." 
And since that day there has been no grog in the 
United States navy. This was the origin of the 
little couplet: 

"They've raised his pay five cents a day 
And stopped his grog forever." 

It was these sober men, fed on honest food and 
drink^ that gave them solid muscles and steady 
nerves and clear heads, whom Cervera undertook 
to fight with a mob of Spanish drunkards. There 
never was a better illustration of the result of 
water pitted against wine, sobriety pitted against 
drunkenness, in the history of the race. The 
Spanish officers sought to stimulate the sailors on 
their splendid modern cruisers by firing them 
with strong drink. They chose for their attempt 
at escape the hour on Sunday morning when they 
knew that the crews of the x\merican ships would 
be at religious services. And with the command 
to advance came the order: "Open the stores of 
wine and brandy." Officers and men drank freely 
therefrom. The Spanish officers drew their pistols 
and threatened instant death to the first man who 
flinched or hesitated in his work. In the stoke 



NOAH^S DRUNKENNESS 67 

hole, mth the mercury at a hundred and twenty 
degrees, half-drunken officers stood near half- 
drunken stokers, and the first man who gave way 
to fatigue and heat and the effect of the liquor was 
shot in his tracks. On the gun decks the sun 
beamed down on men whose stomachs were filled 
with the fiery liquid, and made them half mad. 
They tore their clothing from off their backs, 
cursing and shrieking because of the strain and 
the liquor. Thus nerved with liquor the Spaniards 
prepared for the desperate struggle. The Ameri- 
cans went from their wholesome breakfast, with 
no stimulant stronger than water or coffee, fol- 
lowed by their Sunday prayers, and history will 
ever hold in wonder the result of that great naval 
duel between sober men and drunkards. 

It is greatly to be regretted, and greatly to our 
discredit as a nation, that the government of the 
United States has not had as much wisdom in 
dealing with its soldiers as with its sailors. The 
establishment of army canteens by the government 
itself, and the taking of volunteers — who enlisted 
out of heroic spirit to fight for their country and to 
uphold the "Star Spangled Banner" — and degrad- 
ing them to be bartenders, is a disgrace to the na- 
tion. There can be no doubt that the army can- 
teens have during the Spanish war caused more 



68 THE GREAT SIIS^IstEES OF THE BIBLE 

disease and death than the wounds of the enemy. 
There is abundant testimony that the large death 
roll in our army camps, where the soldiers have 
not been in the face of the enemy at all, has been 
caused in a great degree by strong drink. As an 
indignant editor has recently said, the army can- 
teen is more dangerous than the battle field. Scars 
upon the soldier's body are honorable, but the rot- 
ting drunkard, manufactured by consent of the 
government, if not by its active efforts, is a curse 
that disgraces both the soldier and the government 
long after war has ceased. It is a dishonor that 
the United States should betray a mother's, a 
wife's, or a sister's confidence by upholding a 
nuisance and a peril which the best citizens are 
fighting at home with all their strength. It is a 
shameful thing that the government should con- 
sent to protect and forward the canteen, and thus 
bring temptation and possible ruin to young men 
who scorn to patronize the saloon at home. Be- 
cause of these army canteens many soldiers who 
escaped death in the fever hospital will come back 
sots. 

One does not have to go far for illustrations or 
warnings of the peril which comes from the drink. 
It spares neither childhood nor old age. One day, 
within a week, iu Kew York city, a gray-haired 



69 



man sixty-seven years old, a respectable man and 
fairly well-to-do, stabbed his son, twenty-six years 
old, to death in the presence of his horror-stricken 
family, simply because, while under the madden- 
ing influence of strong drink, he came home and 
found his son lying on the father's bed taking a 
nap. Had he been sober, nothing could have 
tempted him to do such a deed, but the drink in 
him made him a murderer. On the same day, in 
the same city and the same ward, there was found 
lying in the gutter, reeking with the fumes of 
liquor, a well-dressed little boy of seven years. He 
belonged to a good family. He was taken to a 
hospital, and when the doctors had brought him to, 
so that he could talk, this little boy, scarcely more 
than a baby, who had never tasted liquor in his life 
Tuitil that day, said that a saloon keeper had first 
given him a big drink of beer, and had then given 
him a glass of "something cold that burned his 
throat" — which those about his cot in the hospital 
had no difiiculty in recognizing as whisky. The 
reporter nonchalantly closed his report of the oc- 
currence by saying that no attempt was made to 
arrest the saloon keeper. 

This traffic in strong drink is the horrid blight 
of our time. John Euskin says, "Drunkenness is 
not only the cause of crime^ it is crime ; and the 



70 THE GREAT SINl^EKS OF THE BIBLE 

encouragement of drunkenness for the sake of 
profit on the sale of drink is certainly one of the 
most criminal methods of assassination for money 
ever adopted by the people of any age or coun- 
try.'' 

A physician relates that he was standing with a 
friend in front of a saloon in a neighboring city 
when a builder of his acquaintance, a man of ami- 
able and excellent character, a first-class workman, 
full of business, with an interesting family, re- 
spected by everybody and bidding fair to be one 
of the leading men of the city, came up to them 
and laughingly said : 

"Well, I have just done what I never did before 
in my life." 

"What was that?" 

"Why, a man has owed me a bill for work for a 
long time, and I dunned him for the money till I 
was tired ; but a minute ago I caught him out here 
and asked him for the money. ^Well,' he said, 
'I'll pay it to you if you'll step in here and get a 
drink with me.' 'N"o,' said I; ^I never drink — 
never drank in my life.' 'Well,' he replied, 'do 
as you please ; if you won't drink with me, I won't 
pay your bill, that's all !' But I told him I could 
not do that. However, finding he would not pay 
the bill, rather than lose the money I went in and 



got the drink. '^ And he laughed at the strange 
occurrence, as he concluded. 

As soon as he had finished the story the doctor's 
companion, an old, discreet, shrewd man, turned 
to him, and in a most impressive tone said, "Sir, 
that was the dearest drink that ever crossed your 
lips, and the worst bill you ever collected.'' 

Happy would it have been for that man had he 
taken warning at that word of reproof, for the 
physician testifies that in less than twelve months 
that builder had become a confirmed drinker, and 
in three years died the death of a drunken vaga- 
bond. 

I wish with all the earnestness of my soul to 
impress upon both men and women — for one of 
the saddest features of recent modern life is the 
increase of drunkenness among society women — 
that you cannot afford to depend on stimulants to 
build up temporarily your strength or the sparkle 
of your conversation. Every bit of added strength 
or intellectual brilliancy furnished by strong drink 
is fictitious and curses in the end. My good friend. 
Dr. Amos R. Wells, says that he once went to see 
an exhibition of Gustave Dore's pictures. As a 
boy he had been fascinated with the spirited work 
of this artist, as he saw it represented in engrav- 
ings, and he anticipated a rich treat in seeing the 



72 THE GBEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

glorious originals. But, alas! thougli a few of 
them met his anticipations, and were brilliant in- 
deed, most of them were only immense sheets of 
dull colors ; some of them mere ghosts of pictures 
peering out of a world of black. Dore did not use 
properly made colors, and so his paintings scarcely 
outlasted the life of the artist himself. It is said 
that the same is true of the widely admired work 
of the great Hungarian painter, Munkacsy, who 
painted "Christ Before Pilate," and "Christ on 
Calvary." He is very fond of the use of bitumen, 
which imparts exceeding richness to pictures, but 
must be used with great caution or it will turn the 
painting black. Munkacsy, however, uses it lav- 
ishly, and some of his most valued works are al- 
ready almost indistinguishable. In working on 
the greater canvas of human life what multitudes 
are tempted to drown care, and make life sparkle 
and seem brighter for an hour, at the risk of ruin- 
ing the whole beautiful picture ! How many there 
are to-night in prisons and penitentiaries, in in- 
sane asylums and hospitals, in cellars and attics, 
while others are only human drift logs floating on 
the current as drunken tramps, who began the 
painting of a life and character with as fair and 
sweet a promise as is held by any one of us here, 
but the strong drink mixed with the colors has 



NOAH^S DBUNKENNESS 73 

changed the canvas that would have been a thing 
of beauty into a loathsome daub that is fit only for 
the waste heap. 

I do not dare to close without a word of hope 
and invitation to anyone here who is already 
under the grip of this evil habit, and who finds 
that its power has steadily grown upon him until 
his resolutions to keep away from the drink are 
broken again and again. I want to say to any 
such that for the sting of the adder, the bite of the 
serpent that is in the winecup, there is only one 
certain cure, and that is in the Christ. Dr. Lang- 
mann read a paper not long since, before the 'New 
York Academy of Medicine, which has aroused 
widespread interest. It described the experiments 
which he has been making with snake poisons, 
through which he has produced an antidote which, 
when he has fully developed it, he believes will 
prove infallible. If his confidence is justified it 
will be a great blessing to the world, and his name 
will go down in history as one of the greatest bene- 
factors of mankind. Multitudes in our own coun- 
try and far greater multitudes in India and other 
lands would be saved from death every year 
through such a cure. Everyone who has the mis- 
fortune to be bitten by a poisonous snake will re- 
sort to it. How much happier the world would 



74 THE GREAT SH^NEKS OF THE BIBLE 

become if men everywhere were as wise in seeking 
a cure from the deadly venom of sin ! But, thank 
God, there is a cure which is infallible. 'No mat- 
ter how terrible the havoc which sin has wrought 
in the system, God has provided a remedy which 
is able to bring health and peace. "As Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so 
must the Son of man be lifted up : that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have eter- 
nal life." 



CAMPING ON THE ROAD TO SODOM 75 



CHAPTER VI 

Camping on the Road to Sodom 

Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain, and pitched his 
tent toward ^odom.— Genesis xiii, 12. 

If you want to prove the size of a man you must 
take a time when he is under pressure. Take a 
company of men who are at ease, all prosperous 
and contented, and they may seem to be very much 
alike; but put the same men under the stress of 
some great emergency, when you have a chance to 
prove the mettle that is in them, and you will be 
astonished to see what diversity there is in the 
group. One man will prove to be a hero, and 
another a coward ; one will be generous and unsel- 
fish, while another will be stingy and mean. 

Abraham and Lot, living together as uncle and 
nephew, seemed very much alike ; but when there 
came to be strife between their herders, and there 
was a problem on hand to be settled, Abraham 
looms up large and gracious and noble, while Lot 
becomes lean and shriveled under our gaze. It 
was a magnanimous thing for Abraham, the older 



76 THE GEEAT SIN^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

man, to offer to Lot his choice of territory when it 
seemed wise that they should separate their flocks. 
And if Lot had been of the same moral stature as 
his uncle, he would have refused to take advantage 
of Abraham's generosity and have insisted on his 
great relative having the first choice. 

But Lot was essentially a little man. He had a 
great greed for money. He was religiously in- 
clined, and having been brought up to serve God, 
and living all his life under the shadow of Abra- 
ham's gracious influence, he purposed in a general 
way to be a good man; but there was a deeper, 
overshadowing purpose to get rich. Lot's purpose 
was in harmony with the advice given by the old 
farmer to his son: "My boy, get rich. Get rich 
honestly, if you can ; but in any event get rich." 

Lot looked out over the plain toward Sodom and 
he saw that it was a very well watered and fertile 
country, by far the richest pasture land in the en- 
tire region. One great drawback to it was that 
it bordered on Sodom, and Sodom was infamous 
throughout all the world of that day for its wicked- 
ness. To a man who had a family growing up this 
was no unimportant matter ; but it no doubt made 
a good market for cattle, and Lot reasoned that 
it was better for him to take the risks of moral 
degeneration than, as a great cattle raiser, to lose 



CAMPING ON THE ROAD TO SODOM 77 

the beef trade of Sodom. So Lot says, I'll take 
this valley, and pitch my tent toward Sodom. 

'Now, it is useless for us to revive this old story 
of a far-off past unless we apply it to ourselves; 
for these stories never lose their value, because the 
great struggles of human nature are always the 
same. I doubt not that some who are listening to 
this discourse are at the same place, where the 
roads diverge, and are tempted to make their camp 
on the road toward Sodom. Lot found it a bad 
choice, and so will you. Lot found that the wick- 
edness of Sodom poisoned the air of all the plains ; 
and so do men who thrust themselves into evil 
associations to-day. 

Julia Ward Howe says that some forty years 
ago, in company with her husband, Dr. Samuel 
G. Howe, she visited Cuba. Dr. Howe there made 
the acquaintance of a noble Cuban advanced in 
age, a teacher who for years had done everything 
in his power to give to the youth of the country a 
training in accordance with the progress and spirit 
of the time. He was closely watched by Spanish 
officials, but was so beloved and honored by the 
people that the government was reluctant to in- 
terfere with his work. Mrs. Howe one day accom- 
panied her husband to call upon this venerable 
sage, whose name was Don Pepe della Luz. Dur- 



?8 Tn::e griSat sInJ^^ers oe* the bible 

ing the conversation the old man said, "Doctor, 
what we need here is that air of which you and I 
were speaking the other day — that air, you know/' 
When they were hy themselves she asked her hus- 
band what air it was of which Don Pepe was 
speaking, and he said it was the air of freedom. 
So there is such a thing as an atmosphere of rever- 
ence toward God and of respect for righteousness. 
While Lot lived with Abraham he enjoyed that 
sort of an atmosphere. Wherever Abraham went 
he built an altar to God. Angels were his visitors, 
and there was an atmosphere of thanksgiving and 
prayer pervading the life of the home. Compared 
to such an atmosphere Sodom was hell itself. 
There was no such thing as prayer, or spiritual 
song or conversation, in that wicked city. This 
explains the moral degeneration of many young 
men and young women who come from home, 
either on the farm or in some smaller town, to live 
in the city. They have been accustomed to a re- 
ligious atmosphere. The Bible has been a respected 
and loved book among the people with whom they 
have associated. They have been accustomed to 
attend public church services, regarding the Sab- 
bath day as sacred, and prayer has been the daily 
atmosphere of life. They come to the city and are 
thrown into a different air. They associate with 



CAMPING ON THE ROAD TO SODOM i\f 

people who do not praj, who do not read the Bible, 
and who seldom go to church. It is an air poi- 
soned with irreverence and skepticism of sacred 
things. If not definitely immoral, it is permeated 
with the smoke of Sodom and has the smell of 
Sodom in it. A man who gives himself up to that 
kind of an atmosphere has pitched his tent on the 
road to Sodom ; he may not have got to Sodom yet, 
but he is camping on the way, and it is only a ques- 
tion of time before he will have settled down to 
live in the midst of its godlessness and wickedness. 
There is perhaps not an incident in the Bible 
that more clearly suggests the danger of an evil 
tendency, a false current, than this story of Lot 
pitching his tent toward Sodom. If you had asked 
Lot the next week, or the next year, if he were going 
to move to Sodom to live, he, no doubt, would have 
denied it. He would have declared that he had no 
such intention. Perhaps one of Lot's faults was 
that he lacked definite moral decision. He was 
getting ready to go to Sodom all the time, though 
he did not know it. If you had asked Abraham 
if he were going to Sodom to live, you would have 
heard a "Xo" with such a blunt emphasis about it 
that you would never have forgotten it. One of 
the most dangerous things to the building up of a 
really successful career is the lack of a definite 



80 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

vital purpose to do a noble thing. It is so in the 
ordinary business affairs of life. A man without 
a strong and definite plan is likely to go to the wall 
and to fail of worthy achievement. Owen Mere- 
dith says of one of his characters ; 

"With irresolute finger he knocked at each one 

Of the doorways of life, and abided in none. 

The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, 

May hope to achieve it before life be done; 

But he who seeks all things wherever he goes, 

Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows 

A harvest of barren regrets." 

A popular novelist makes one of her young 
women ask of a young man : 

" ^Have you made any plan V 

*"' ^Yes/ he said, the words coming in jets, with 
pauses between ; ^I will travel first — I will see the 
world — then I will find work.' 

"She made a little impatient movement and 
said : ^That is no plan ; "travel, see the world, find 
work." If you go into the world aimless, without 
a definite object, dreaming, dreaming, you will be 
definitely defeated, bamboozled, knocked this way 
and that. In the end you will stand with your beau- 
tiful life all spent, and nothing to show. They talk 
of genius — it is nothing but this, that a man knows 
what he can do best; nothing else. It does not 



CAMPING ON THE ROAD TO SODOM 81 

matter what you choose. Be a farmer, business 
man, artist — what jou will — ^but know your aim 
and live for that one thing. We have only one 
life. The secret of success is concentration : where- 
ever there has been a great life, or a great work, 
that has gone before. Taste everything a little, 
look at everything a little, but live for one thing. 
Anything is possible to a man who knows his end 
and moves straight for it, and for it alone.' " 

And this is as true when it comes to the great 
questions of moral character. You are getting 
ready to be either a noble man, a holy, saintly 
woman, or a moral failure. I'm not asking what 
you are to-night, but on what road are you camp- 
ing ? Abraham went on his way, camping out and 
living in tents also ; but while Lot pitched his tent 
toward Sodom, Abraham pitched his tent toward 
"a city which hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God.'' Every day brought each of these 
men toward the end of his career, and every step 
took them farther apart. We see men making the 
same choices now. Two young men come from the 
same to^vn to build their careers in the city. One 
goes at once to the church and identifies himself 
with the Sunday school and the prayer meeting 
and Christian work. He becomes acquainted with 
that kind of people. In a business way he may 



82 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

know many sorts, but he makes his fellowships and 
friendships among the men and women who wor- 
ship God and are helping to make the world better. 
These friendships become like a wall about him. 
They commit him to a righteous life. They are 
his tent, which he pitches toward heaven. He is 
not a saint yet, but his tent is pitched on that road. 
Every day and every year of such a life brings 
him farther along the way of robust Christian 
character. 

The other young man, while not intending or 
purposing to be a wicked man, thinks, perhaps, 
that he has been brought up too strictly, and now 
that he is in a new community, without the re- 
straints of home, he can look around a little and 
see the world. He soon finds that the people who 
are "seeing the world" are of a different class from 
those with whom he has been acquainted ; there is 
about them a certain carelessness and dash, a cer- 
tain freedom from responsibility — yes, a certain 
recklessness — that fascinates him. The theater, 
the card table, the wineglass are now, as they al- 
ways have been, the favorite diversions of people 
who are "seeing the world." He forms his asso- 
ciations among such people. He is more likely 
to make friends with the worst of them than the 
best. He may or may not succeed in his business ; 



CAMPING ON THE EOAD TO SODOM 83 

he may or may not advance as a lawyer or doctor ; 
but morally he steadily loses. He loses his keen 
reverence for the Bible. The prayer meeting and 
the Sunday school seem slow and heavy to him 
after the glamour of some play that has been spiced 
with a dash of wickedness — not enough to make 
him revolt against it, but just enough to awaken 
the dare-devil that is in him. He may or may not 
fall into outbreaking sin that will shame and dis- 
grace him; but the very air he breathes in such 
association will dull the edge of his moral sensi- 
bilities, will cool his ardor for religious conversa- 
tion, and will surely and steadily draw him on- 
ward on the way to Sodom. 

Do not doubt that to be on the road to Sodom is 
to get to Sodom sooner or later, if you do not turn 
around and go the other way. Lot made a bad 
trade after all. I do not know just how much 
wealth he laid up — he may have become very 
wealthy and have retired into Sodom to live on 
the interest of his money; but he was finally a 
loser, for when Sodom was burned up because of 
its wickedness he lost everything he had and barely 
escaped with his life. Mortgages on property in 
Sodom are always a bad investment. 

It is a bad thing to go on a path where success 
will mean failure. One of the saddest things one 



84 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

ever reads went the rounds a little while ago con- 
cerning George Du Maurier, the author of Trilby. 
While he was sick, and on his death bed, a friend 
referred to the success of Trilby as a book and as 
a play, whereupon Du Maurier sadly replied: 
^•'Yes, it has been successful. But the popularity 
has killed me at last.'' Many men are destroyed 
by their own success. Lot succeeded — and lost 
everything. Du Maurier succeeded, but lost his 
life ; and many men here in Cleveland are succeed- 
ing — only to find remorse and ruin at the last. 

I would like to say with power to any young 
man here who is trading the prayer meeting in 
which he was brought up for the card party or the 
theater, that, fascinating as the exchange may seem, 
he is pitching his tent toward Sodom and the end 
will be disastrous. I want to say to any youth who 
is choosing his companions from among the irrev- 
erent and reckless, because they seem gayer than 
Christians, that every such friendship is a tent on 
the road to Sodom. Many a young woman has 
gone down on the road to Sodom in such a friend- 
ship, and married a man who lived there, and 
afterward found herself dragged into Sodom to 
her lifelong sorrow. I want to say to every young 
man, or young woman either, who is beginning to 
dally with the glass of beer or the bottle of wine, 



i 



CAMPII^G ON" THE ROAD TO SODOM 85 

You are pitching a tent on the way to Sodom, and 
there are no tents that move so rapidly as on the 
path of stimulant and intoxication. Have the 
courage to break up every such camp while you 
may. The very people who are tempting you will 
respect you a great deal more for such courage. 

When General Clinton B. Fisk was in command 
of the military district of St. Louis, it became his 
duty, on one occasion, officially to receive and wel- 
come to that city an eminent major general coming 
to take command of the military department. 
General Fisk met his commander on the east side 
of the river and escorted him to the hotel in which 
he had engaged a suite of rooms. 

As soon as they were within the parlor — at once 
assuming the place of host, and ready to treat the 
other officers as his guests — the major general 
ordered a servant to bring four whisky punches. 

"Only three, if you please, General ; excuse me,'' 
promptly and courteously spoke General Fisk. 

"You'll not refuse to drink with me, will you ?" 
said the superior officer. 

"If I should drink now it would be the first 
time. You would not advise me to begin now, 
would you, General ?" 

"ItTo ; God bless you ! Long may you wave !" 
was the gracious and gallant response. 



86 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

How I would add to the peace of hundreds of 
young men in this city if I could inspire them to- 
night to follow that courageous example. 

I cannot close without urging upon any who are 
camping on the way to Sodom to break camp this 
very hour and turn the other way. True, Lot was 
saved when Sodom was burned up, but what a sal- 
vation ! He was saved as by the skin of his teeth. 
He was plucked as a brand from the burning. He 
lost his property, he lost his wife and his children, 
and, old and bankrupt and broken-hearted, he crept 
out of that horrible desolation. Don't look for- 
ward to such a salvation as that; but now, while 
youth and strength are yours, break up the camp 
that has its tent door open toward Sodom and pitch 
your tent with the people of God, who, like Abra- 
ham, build an altar of worship wherever they go. 
Breaking camp is an open matter that everybody 
can see, and so the more boldly you turn about and 
confess your sins the happier it will be for you. 
'^If we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to 
forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all un- 
righteousness." During the last great plague and 
famine in India, many people brought still greater 
horrors on themselves because they would hide 
away the corpses at the back of their hovels. When 
the dead-cart came around they said there were 



CAMPING ON THE EOAD TO SODOM 87 

no dead in the house, and so the decaying body was 
left to poison the atmosphere and kill many that 
would otherwise have escaped. To try to hide our 
sins or cover them up is like that. They will poi- 
son all our lives. '^Whoso covereth his sins shall 
not prosper." It is better to bring our own sins 
to the light now, and have them forgiven, than to 
keep them covered up for a time, and have them 
drag us to judgment and doom after a while. 



88 THE GEEAT SIIS^NERS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEE VII 

The Ladder of the Ak"gels^ and the Stnis-er 
AT the Foot 

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the 
earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold 
the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, 
behold, the Lord stood above it.— Genesis xxviii, 12, 13. 

Soft sins lead to hard lodgings. It seemed a 
sharp, shrewd trick for Jacob to cover his hands and 
neck and face with the hairy goatskins, and thus 
deceive his father, w^ho was old and blind, and in- 
sure for himself the blessing which belonged by 
birthright to Esau. But I imagine the trick seemed 
less cunning that night at Bethel when, tired, worn 
out with a forty-mile walk, he lay down on the hard 
ground, and with a harder stone for his pillow slept 
the heavy slumber of an utterly exhausted man. 

Depend upon it, sin does not always wait till the 
end of the journey to make itself felt. It has 
way stations of punishment all along the path. 

A very subdued looking boy of about thirteen 
years, with a long scratch on his nose and an air of 
general dejection, came to his teacher, in one of 



THE I.ADDEK 0¥ THE ANGELS 89 

the Boston public schools, and handed her a note 
before taking his seat and becoming deeply ab- 
sorbed in his books. The note read as follows: 

^^Miss B : Please excuse James for not being at 

school yesterday. He played truant, but I guess 
you don't need to lick him for it, as he and the boy 
he played truant with fell out and the boy licked 
him. Also a man they sassed caught him and licked 
him. The driver of a sled they hung on to licked 
him. Then his pa licked him, and I had to give 
him another for sassing me for telling his pa, so you 
need not lick him until next time. I guess he 
thinks he had better keep in school hereafter." 
That boy was doubtless of the opinion of Kipling, 
who is said to have been present at a discussion par- 
ticipated in by a number of literary men where the 
question argued was whether there was a God or 
not. Finally Kipling brought his fist down on the 
table, ending the discussion with the pertinent 
sentence, "I know there is somebody somewhere 
who gives us our licks." E'o man here who has 
come toward the years of maturity but has found 
that there is, back of all life, some intelligence 
which executes and makes real the edict of the 
Bible that "the way of the transgressor is hard." 
Jacob found it so in the old Eastern land where he 
dwelt, and every sinner in Cleveland is finding it 



90 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

SO now. The sin may be soft enougli, but the bed 
it sends you to is hard. 

It may seem a far cry from this opening sugges- 
tion to the next that impresses me in our study to- 
night, but it is this: that heaven is not far away 
from earth; it is so near that its inhabitants are 
very much interested in the things that are going 
on here, and are seeking the welfare of dwellers on 
the earth. Jesus says that heaven is so close to this 
world that there is great rejoicing there over any 
sinner who repents of his sins and turns his feet 
toward that land. I think Dr. George H. Hep- 
worth is right in his feeling that this nearness of 
heaven to earth is either ignored or kept silent 
about a good deal more than is wise. The worst 
feature of that tender sorrow that bereaves us of 
our loved ones is the feeling that those dear to us 
have gone so far away. It is that feeling which 
breaks the heart and clothes those who are left be- 
hind in blackest mourning. If a child out of a 
family goes across the sea to study in some foreign 
land the sense of loss is often very keen, and the 
separation is hard to bear, but those who remain at 
home are buoyed up with the thought that the 
young man or young woman is not only alive, but 
is receiving benefits which could not be obtained at 
home; and though those who remain are lonely and 



THE LADDER OF THE ANGELS 91 

grieved, there is mingled with the sorrow something 
which makes them even proud of the ability to sac- 
rifice themselves for the good of the absent member 
of the family. If, however, one dies out of the 
household flock and goes to heaven, the attitude is 
very different. There is then not only that sense 
of separation but the added sense of loss. There 
is usually little or no appreciation of the fact that 
heaven is a great deal nearer than Europe. The 
thought of immeasurable distance weighs down the 
soul into hopeless discouragement. Surely we 
would be very greatly comforted if we opened our 
hearts to receive fully the assurances of the Bible, 
both in the Old and ITew Testaments, that heaven 
is so near to earth that there is constant communi- 
cation, and that our lives are constantly brooded 
over and visited on tender missions by glorious 
angels. 

We have also suggested here the comforting 
truth that heaven is full of mercy and sympathy 
for the sinner. They do not repudiate us because 
we have been overborne by temptation and have 
been forced out into exile by our sins. Heaven is 
not merciful to us only when we deserve it, but 
when we need it. Jacob was in great need of this 
revelation of God's mercy and willingness to for- 
give him and lead him in a new way. He had 



92 THE GREAT SII^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

made a bad start and was being driven away from 
home by bis sins. There was every reason to fear 
that he would go straight to ruin; for ruin is always 
at the end of the sinner's path. 

A young man who was converted during some 
special evangelistic meetings held in a mining vil- 
lage, desirous of doing something for God, bought 
some tracts. He was distributing these little book- 
lets one day when he met some of his old com- 
panions, who derided him as he spoke to them of 
Jesus. 

"Here," said one of the old companions; "can 
you tell me where hell is?" 

After a moment's hesitation the young man 
looked up and said: "Yes; it's at the end of a Christ- 
less life.'' 

And no man is ever in greater danger of tak- 
ing the short cut to such an end than the young 
man whose sins have driven him away from home. 
He finds himself in hard circumstances, without 
friends, and without the constraint of the public 
opinion of people who have known him, to hold 
him up to do his best. Such a young man is 
tempted to say: "It makes no difference now what I 
do. l^obody cares; I have made a bad start, and 
got a bad name at home, and in this new place no- 
body knows me or cares what becomes of me. I 



THE LADDER OF THE Al^GELS 93 

might as well have my fling." Ah, how many boys 
have gone to ruin like that! 

A man in such a state needs, more than anything 
else, to come face to face with God and know that 
God has not given him up, but loves him even now, 
and is willing to save him. Jacob needed nothing 
so much as that, ^o doubt he thought he needed 
other things more. He wanted a home ; he wanted a 
soft bed and a square meal; he wanted friends, and 
employment, and a chance to make his way; but, 
whether he appreciated it or not, what he really 
needed more than anything else was to meet God. 

A little boy came to his father one day and laid 
his hand upon his knee, looking up wistfully. 

"Do you want a penny, child?" 

The sweet face glowed and the answer came, 
"1^0, papa; only you." 

So, my friend, it is not money, nor success, nor 
fame, nor fashionable pleasures, none of these 
things that you need most. The supreme need 
is to find God ; to be sure of his love ; to be certain 
that at the top of the ladder of life is God. 

What a sinner needs when he has made his fail- 
ure, and lost all, is a new chance. Jacob by his 
sins had emptied himself of home, and inheritance, 
and everything that he counted valuable. Is that 

not true of some of you? Many times people are 

7 



94: THE GBEAT SIiq^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

unconscious of being in such a state until their real 
bankruptcy of soul comes on them as a shock. 

There is an old legend about an Egyptian mon- 
arch who had his treasure-house built, as he 
thought, so as to be impregnable against thieves. 
But in one corner of the wall the architect had built 
a stone which revolved upon a pivot and could be 
pushed round, so as to give access, and when dying 
he left the secret to his sons. So, night after night, 
the sons crept in and brought away some of the 
hoarded wealth; and when the king, fancying his 
coif ers to be still full, went in to count his treasures 
he found that they were nearly all gone. How 
many are being thus robbed of more important 
treasures! Where is the innocency which you 
once knew as a little boy or a little girl? where is the 
gentle tenderness of heart? where the unselfishness? 
where the open-handed genuineness of character 
which was your treasure in your youth? where the 
simple confidence in God and in his word that made 
prayer as simple and natural as talking with your 
parents? Where are these treasures, worth a mil- 
lion times more than any gold or silver? Alas! 
unseen hands have stolen them away. What you 
need, then, is what Jacob needed : a new chance ; 
and that is what God gave him, and what he is 
ready to give you. If I speak to any man here who 



THE LADDER OF THE ANGELS 95 

is discouraged and disheartened, I want to say "a 
word in season to him that is weary." !N'o matter 
if you are past middle age, and have lost what 
seemed to you to be the best opportunities of life; 
if you are yet alive God stands the new ladder of 
the angels down at your feet. 

The whole world has recently seen a splendid 
illustration of what a man can sometimes do to re- 
cover lost ground in a business way even after his 
hair is white. Mark Twain awoke one morning a 
few years since to find himself utterly ruined finan- 
cially ; a bankrupt ; a great many tens of thousands 
of dollars worse off than nothing. In addition to 
that, his health was very frail. Many a man in 
similar circumstances wotdd have sat down to mope 
out in despair the few years left to him; but the 
brave-hearted humorist set himself to work, with an 
energy surpassing that of youth, to retrieve his for- 
tune. He laughed at the people who said to him 
that he had done his best work. He belted the 
globe with lectures and writings, until, a little while 
ago, he is said to have made a dinner for his cred- 
itors and laid beside each plate, in lieu of the menu 
card, a check in full for the balance of his indebt- 
edness. Some one has well said, "That is the best 
joke Mark Twain ever perpetrated." God gave 
him a new chance. But God is always doing that 



96 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

in a spiritual way to men. Jacob had forfeited one 
chance but God gave him another, and out of his 
despair there arose before his vision this ladder of 
the angels, and above them God reminding him 
that he was the God of his fathers, that he was his 
God, and that he was ready to guide him and make 
his life a great and splendid success. 

Surely I could bring you no sweeter message 
than this : You may begin life over again, you may 
have a new chance, through God's infinite mercy. 
During a terrific storm, some years ago, a ship was 
driven far out of her course, and, helpless and dis- 
abled, was carried into a strange bay. The water 
supply gave out, and the crew suffered agonies of 
thirst yet dared not drink of the salt water in which 
their vessel floated. In their last extremity they 
lowered a bucket over the ship's side and in despera- 
tion quaffed the beverage they thought was sea 
water, but, to their joy and amazement, the water 
was fresh, cool, and life-giving. They were in a 
fresh-water arm of the sea and they did not know it. 
They had simply to reach down and accept the new 
life and strength for which they prayed. 

My brother, weary with your sorrow and your 
sin, discouraged at your failure, throw a bucket 
over the ship's side and drink the sweet water of 
God's forgiving love and mercy. Start again. Do 



THE LADDER OF THE AITGELS 91 

not for a moment imagine that because you liav& 
failed once you may not now succeed. Josli Bill- 
ings once said, "A man who is bitten twice by the 
same dog is better adapted to that business than any 
other." The fact that you have had one failure 
will help you to steer clear of that failure in the 
future. Take heart, brother! Heaven is not far 
away, and God bends over you with mercy. 



98 THE GKEAT SINNEKS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEE VIII 

The "Slii^-gs ai^d Arrows"^ of an Outraged 
Conscience 

And they said one to another, We are verily guilty con- 
cerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his 
soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear; there- 
fore is this distress come upon us.— Genesis xlii, 21. 

The memory is one of the most important and 
marvelous characteristics of the human mind. 
Each one of us by daily deeds is hanging pictures 
on the walls of memory that will make of it, in time 
to come, either a chamber of peace or a dungeon of 
torture. 

There is an old Persian story of a vizier who 
dedicated one apartment in his palace to be a 
chamber of memory. In it he kept the memorials 
of his earlier days, before royal favor had lifted 
him from his lowly place to a position of honor. It 
was a little room with bare floor, and here he kept 
his crook, his wallet, his coarse dress, and his water 
cruse — the things which had belonged to his shep- 
herd life. Every day he went for an hour from the 
splendors of his palace into this humble apartment 



« 



OF CONSCIENCE 99 

to live again for a time amid the memories of his 
happy youth. Very sweet were his recollections, 
and by this daily visit his heart was kept warm and 
tender amid all the pomp and show, and all the trial 
and sorrow, of his public life. 

Whether we live in a palace or a tenement house, 
we have each our chamber of memory, and we are 
furnishing it after our own designs. Pictures hang 
there which no eye but God's sees. And these 
furnishings which are daily enriching it with beau- 
tiful things that minister to comfort and peace, or 
with relics and mementoes of evil that will torture 
us in times of weakness and age, are our own crea- 
tion; and we should select them with the greatest 
care, for when once we have them we cannot escape 
from them. If a man does not like his house he 
may move away from it. He can sell it or rent it 
and move on to another street, where the surround- 
ings suit him better. He may even go to another 
town or another city to escape unpleasant surround- 
ings. But a man cannot get away from the cham- 
ber of his memory in that way. It is like his 
shadow; it walks with him from street to street, 
from place to place, from one year into another; 
lies down with him at night and rises with him in 
the morning. It has the power to compel his at- 
tention when it pleases, and ever and anoii it will 



100 THE GREAT SII^^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

set its pictures before him and insure his interest in 
them. 

A man cannot always decide what he will re- 
member. The subject may be unpleasant, and to 
recall it may shame and humiliate him, but he can- 
not, because of that, say, "I will not think of it 
again.'' We see a signal illustration of this in the 
text we are considering. Joseph's brethren were 
a long way from home, in a strange land where they 
had no knowledge that anyone knew anything 
about them. But they are suddenly confronted with 
rough treatment on the part of the ruler before 
whom they had come begging the privilege to buy 
corn, in the great stress of famine which was pinch- 
ing them and their families. I^ot a word had been 
said to them about Joseph, and they had perhaps 
not mentioned his name to each other for a long 
time. It was no doubt a tabooed subject between 
"Jiem, and it was so sad a subject to Jacob, their 
father, that there is every reason to suppose that the 
name of the lost youth was never mentioned in his 
presence; and yet, although their wicked deed to 
Joseph was twenty years or more past, when they 
were threatened with imprisonment and misfortune 
to every man of them there came up that old pic- 
ture of the hills of Dothan and the lad with his coat 
of many colors, Though the seasons of twenty 



"slings and arrows'" of conscience 101 

years had come and gone, it all came back to tliem 
as though it were yesterday. They see the delicate, 
thoughtful boy coming over the hills in the distance 
with his message from home. They see themselves 
gathered together again, plotting against him as he 
comes Avith childlike trust toward them. All the 
old envy and jealousy that burned in their vengeful 
hearts comes back to them now, and seems absurd 
and wicked and horrible to them as they look back 
on it from the distance. They hear themselves say- 
ing again, "Come now therefore, and let us slay 
him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say. 
Some evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall 
see what will become of his dreams." Ah, what 
would they not give now to have that dreamer 
back! They see again the fear and terror on the 
delicate face of Joseph as they tear off his beautiful 
coat of many colors and fling him into the pit. And 
then the Egyptian caravan comes by, and they pull 
him up out of the pit and sell him for twenty pieces 
of silver, hardening their hearts against his cries 
and his anguish at their inhuman treatment. They 
have not thought of it for a long time, but to every 
man of them it comes back again as sharp and clear 
in its outlines as though it had just happened. 
They see that bloody coat again in their hands, 
which thev had stained with the blood of a slain kid 



102 THE GREAT SINIS^EES OF THE BIBLE 

to deceive the poor old father. They hear again 
the lie on their lips when they took the bloody, 
torn garment to Jacob and said: "This have we 
found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or 
no." And again they look in the old man's despair- 
ing face and hear his heart-broken moan : "It is my 
son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph 
is without doubt rent in pieces." How could they 
ever forget that day ? Jacob has never seemed like 
the same man since. And now these men turn one 
to another, and instead of talking about how they 
are going to escape, or how they are going to prove 
that they are not spies, every last man of them is 
thinking how he is ever going to get rid of that old 
sin of twenty years ago. 

Marvelous is the tenacity of the memory of con- 
science. Forge tfulness never can be trusted. 
Things seem to be lost in oblivion, but they are not 
lost. Isaiah declares that a wicked conscience is 
like a troubled sea that cannot rest, and the mire 
and the clay that have been cast into it in years gone 
by are likely to come up again at any time, and be 
cast upon the shore only to be washed away by the 
returning tide and flung into sight again on some 
other beach a hundred miles away. Sin can never 
be finally hidden in God's universe, for God has 
not abandoned his creation and he knows how to 



"slings AlTD ARROWS''^ OF COITSCIENCE 103 

cause a man's sin to find him out. THs world is a 
bad place for secrets. It is a great whispering gal- 
lery. Christ said that what men think in their 
hearts and speak in their closets is yet to be shouted 
from the housetops. A little old saying, used when 
we have discovered somebody's secret, is often on 
our tongue: "A little bird told me." Like many 
other sayings and proverbs that have become popu- 
lar in our common language, it had its source in the 
Bible. If you will turn to the book of Ecclesiastes 
you will hear the Wise Man saying: "Curse not the 
king, no not in thy thought: for a bird of the air 
shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings 
shall teU the matter" — a graphic way of setting 
forth the certainty of sin's discovering itself. 

A sinner not only carries the proof of his guilt 
in his own heart and conscience, but he carries there 
the court that pronounces sentence. These men 
did not wait for God's judgment. Their own con- 
sciences judged them and condemned them. 
They said to one another: "We are verily guilty 
concerning our brother." Guilt of conscience turns 
a man against himself. Other witnesses may be 
all dead, or may have gone out of the country, or 
may be friendly to us and have no intention of ac- 
cusing us, but that does not make the sinner safe; 
for he carries in his own breast the greatest accuser 



104 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

of all, one that can neither die nor run awaj, and one 
who can never be trusted to keep his guilty secret. 
Quaint old Doctor South says that sin will lie burn- 
ing and boiling in the sinner's breast like a kind of 
Vesuvius of fire pent up in the bowels of the earth ; 
which yet must, and will, in spite of all obstacles, 
force its way out at length; thus, in some cases 
of sin, the anguish of the mind grows so fierce and 
intolerable that it finds no rest within itself, but is 
even ready to burst till it is delivered of the swelling 
secret it labors with. There are sins which have 
the same effect on the conscience which some medi- 
cines have on the stomach; they are no sooner re- 
ceived than it is in pain and torment till it throws 
them out again. 

'No man can properly measure the force, the 
power, and the remorseless rage of conscience when 
God commissions it to call the sinner to an account. 
How strangely it will arouse him in an unexpected 
hour! How terribly it will wring and torture him, 
till it has bolted out the hidden guilt of which it 
was in search! As a game dog will run up and 
down through the woods hunting out the darkest 
places, penetrating remote thickets, searching deep 
canons until it routs the game for which it was sent 
and with bellowing drives it to the light, and to the 
master's gun, so God knows how to arouse con^ 



OF COITSCIENCE 105 

science, and send it searching in tlie darkest corners 
of forgetfulness, and with the bellowing that 
sounds like the bell of doom drive sin from its re- 
treat to face the glare of the judgment seat. The 
conscience is God's hunting dog in the sinner's 
breast. You cannot turn it aside with bribes of 
dainty morsels, but, true to its trust, it will steadily 
bring you to condemnation. 

Reason joins with memory in bringing in the 
verdict against the sinning soul. When memory 
brought back the picture of that old wrongdoing, 
conscience made these men say, "We are guilty;" 
and their reason added, "Therefore is this distress 
come upon us." We talk sometimes about poetic 
justice; by that we mean that it is justice peculiarly 
adequate in punishment to the sin. All God's 
judgments are poetic, and the sinner himself, when 
conscience begins its work of judgment, is the first 
to admit that the judgment is poetic and just. 
There is a strange case related in the first chapter 
of Judges of an old man named Adoni-bezek, who 
lived in the land of Bezek and was a sort of an 
Ishmaelite of a man in the world of his day. He 
was a man of great force and power, a bloodthirsty 
old fellow, who boasted of his genius in inventing 
means of torture which he administered to the great 
persons who were captured by him. Finally he ex- 



106 THE GREAT SIKNERS OF THE BIBLE 

perienced the truth of the word which says that the 
man who takes the sword shall perish by the sword, 
and was himself captured, and when he was caught 
his enemies cut off his thumbs and his great toes; 
and old Adoni-bezek in the hour of his imprison- 
ment and despair said: "Threescore and ten kings, 
having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, 
gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, 
so God hath requited me." 

An aroused conscience not only cannot be 
thrown off the scent, but it often causes the sinner 
to flee when no man pursueth. At last these men 
had gone out with sorrow, leaving Simeon behind 
in the dungeon. When they made their first camp 
and opened their sacks they found their money, 
each man's money in his sack. 'Now Joseph had 
done that for love of them, but their guilty con- 
sciences made this incident only a link in the chain 
that seemed to be tightening about them. And 
the next time they came down to Egypt, when 
Joseph commanded that they should be brought 
to his own house and a feast prepared for them, 
although it was intended as a kindness, yet their 
guilty consciences made it seem like a threat and 
drove them wild with terror. And they said one 
to another, "Because of the money that was re- 
turned in our sacks at the first time are we brought 



"slings and arrows ^^ OF CONSCIENCE 107 

in; that he may seek occasion against us, and fall 
upon us, and take us for bondmen." These men 
would not now be shrinking in terror for fear of be- 
coming bondmen themselves, if they had not sold 
Joseph to be a bondman twenty years before. 

1^0 wild beast is more merciless and relentless 
than a guilty conscience. A tiger hunter in India 
heard his companion, who was sleeping on the ve- 
randa, scream out in agony : "Help, for God^s sake ! 
Help! the tiger's got me! Help! help!'' Rush- 
ing through the darkness he found that the tiger 
had stolen in upon his friend without the slightest 
warning and had seized him by the hand, which he 
had raised to defend himself, and had commenced 
to drag him off. In his agony he arose to his feet, 
and after descending the steps of the bungalow was 
actually walking off with his hand in the tiger's 
mouth, to be devoured, when his friend, by his 
courage and presence of mind, rescued him from an 
awful death by stabbing the tiger through the 
heart. A man who has sinned against his own soul 
has put his hand in the mouth of a tiger that will 
drag him to judgment unless it is slain. 

The only cure for a guilty conscience is in for- 
giveness of the sin that caused the guilt. How dif- 
ferently Joseph's brethren felt after he made him- 
self known to them, and assured them of his for- 



108 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

giveness. !N"o doubt, when they first knew who he 
was, thej were all the more apprehensive and fear- 
ful, for they could see that he had the power to put 
them all to death for their sin against him. But 
when, one by one, he embraced them, and assured 
them of his forgiveness, and asked loving questions 
about the old home, all the bitter remorse and terror 
for that sin committed twenty years ago was taken 
away, and it no longer had the power to make them 
shrink and shiver and cower with dread. So, when 
a man is aroused by his conscience to see the horrid 
character of his sin against God, and to keenly ap- 
preciate his guilt, and to know the punishment 
which naturally belongs to his sin, and to realize 
that there is no escaping from God's hand, he is at 
first all the more apprehensive and fearful, and is 
ready to despair. But when he sees on the face of 
Christ, his Saviour, a smiling look of forgiveness, 
and hears his kind words: "Him that cometh to me 
I will in no wise cast out," the bitterness is gone and 
the sting of guilt is taken away, and instead there 
is the joy and peace of conscious forgiveness. 
Joseph's kisses sucked all the poison out of that old 
wound. So the caresses of Jesus Christ suck all 
the poison from the memory of our sins, and 
bring to us a peace that passes all understanding 
and casts out all fear. 



BAD BAEGAINS IN HISTOEY 109 



CHAPTEE IX 

The Three Most !N"otoeious Bad Baegaiits in 
History 

Esau despised his birthright.— G^ewesis xxv, 34. 

They covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.— 
Matthew xxvi, 15. 

What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole 
world, and lose his own soul?— Marfc viii, 36. 

Man is born a trader. Children begin to bar- 
gain with their toys in the nursery. From the 
very beginning of life to its end, man is seeking 
to better his condition by exchanging what he has 
for something else. This bargaining instinct was 
never more thoroughly developed than in our own 
time. It is peculiarly a commercial age. All 
parts of the world are coming under tribute to 
commerce. Every new island, every additional 
square mile of territory that comes under the 
dominion of the flag, is carefully investigated and 
measured from the trade standpoint by the mer- 
chant. In addition, things that used to be thrown 
away and wasted are becoming articles of com- 
merce under the quickened inventive touch of 



110 THE GEEAT SINISTEES OF THE BIBLE 

modern science. N^othing now is wasted in many 
of the great departments of food product. A beef 
steer goes in on one side of a building as a fat steer, 
and comes out on the other as beefsteaks and 
leather and buttons and glue and brushes, l^oth- 
ing is wasted. Everything has gone into bargain. 
Preach as you will against the bargain counter, 
it is always the crowded corner of the store. It is 
an illustration of a deep instinct in humanity. 

But man's instinct is to make good bargains and 
not bad ones, and it is concerning the danger of 
bad bargains that I wish to speak to you at this 
time. The most notorious bad bargain that comes 
to us from the olden time is that of Esau, who sold 
his birthright to Jacob for a mess of pottage. Esau 
was a hunter. He liked the excitement and free- 
dom of the chase. He liked the uncertainty and 
the enthusiasm of hunting for big game. !N"o 
doubt the little tinge of danger there was in it 
spiced the joy of it for his wild and daring spirit. 
Many of us know how to sympathize with him in 
this love for the free and untrammeled and un- 
conventional. One day he came home from the 
hunt having had bad luck. He had found no 
game, and was tired out and in low spirits. He 
found Jacob, his brother, a quiet, shrewd, calcu- 
lating sort of fellow, making pottage of some sort 



I 



BAD BARGAINS IN HISTORY 111 

of coarse vegetables (lentils perhaps), and he asked 
for some. Jacob, ready to drive a sharp bargain, 
said, "Sell me thy birthright." And so Esau, car- 
ing nothing for the birthright, having a contempt 
for it in his heart, sold it to Jacob for a mess of 
pottage. The incident closes in the record by the 
simple statement of our text, "Esau despised his 
birthright." 

The second bad bargain which has attained a 
like notoriety is the bargain which Judas Iscariot 
made when he betrayed Jesus Christ to his ene- 
mies for thirty pieces of silver. There are a great 
many conflicting opinions concerning Judas. 
Some people believe that he was thoroughly bad 
from the beginning; that he followed Christ and 
became one of his disciples purely for what he 
could make out of it, and was always and every- 
where a scoundrel. Other people believe that 
Judas was, like most other folks, both good and 
bad, and that at first he was an honest follower of 
Christ, but that his besetting sin was greed. He 
loved money. He liked to feel its weight heavy 
in the bag. He liked to see it slip through his 
fingers as he counted it in little heaps. This 
grew on him, and as Christ became unpopular, 
and Judas believed that he would be arrested 
anyhow, he conceived the brilliant scheme of 



112 THE GEEAT SINXERS OF THE BIBLE 

making some money out of it and putting him- 
self solid with the government after Christ had 
been condemned. I do not know which of these 
is right, but, as I have never found any man 
without some good qualities in him, I am in- 
clined myself to this latter idea. However it may 
be, Judas evidently allowed his love for money to 
overcome his sentiments of gratitude, and deliber- 
ately made up his mind to bargain off the liberty 
of Jesus by betraying him into the hands of his 
enemies. There is something very repulsive and 
loathsome in the way he did it. His slipping away 
from the table at the last supper, where he had 
broken bread with Christ as one of his dearest 
friends, and his selecting a kiss of seeming love 
as the mode of betrayal, have stamped the trans- 
action as one of the basest and most treacherous 
betrayals in the history of mankind. 

!N'ow, the point I wish specially to bring to your 
thought in regard to each of these bargains is that 
they turned out to be very bad bargains, and very 
unsatisfactory to the men who made them. Yet 
each man got what he had covenanted for. Esau 
got his pottage, and went away strong of limb from 
a hearty meal. Judas got his thirty pieces of sil- 
ver, every one of them. 'No attempt was made to 
cheat in either case, and yet afterward both men 



BAD BAEGAIIsrS IN HISTORY 113 

realized that each had cheated himself and had 
great sorrow over his bargain. 

Esau sold something he did not care for and got 
what he wanted at the time; his birthright was a 
contemptible thing in his sight, and the pottage 
seemed very desirable ; and yet we are told in the 
ISTew Testament that there came a day when he was 
in great agony over the trade he had made, and 
that he found no place for repentance, though he 
sought for it carefully, with bitter tears. It seems 
to have been not only a bad bargain, but a fatally 
bad bargain for Esau. 

We have an equally tragic case in relation to 
Judas. He got his thirty pieces of silver, and was 
at liberty to go about his business, but he was not 
happy. He could not find rest day or night. Esau 
despised his birthright while he had it. Judas 
despised his Lord while he was his disciple, but 
now that he had sold him and got good money in 
his pocket, Christ never seemed so beautiful and 
so noble to him, and the opportunity of being his 
disciple never appeared so precious. He went to 
and fro like a wild man ; he could not eat, he could 
not sleep, and for the first time in his life the con- 
sciousness that he had money failed to give him 
any pleasure. Finally he seems to have had a 
dream of being able to rue the bargain and undo 



114 THE GKEAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

the horrible deed he had done. He went back to 
the priests who had made the trade with him, with 
the money in his hands, and wanted to trade back. 
He said, "I can^t keep this money ; I have betrayed 
innocent blood.'^ But they treated him with brutal 
coldness and disdain. They turned on him with 
contempt, and said: ^^See thou to that. What is 
that to us ?" Poor Judas realized then what a bad 
bargain he had made. Unable to undo the deed 
and get out of his bargain, he was determined to 
at least get rid of the money ; and so he flung the 
silver pieces, that he had sold his Lord to get, 
down on the floor in the presence of the men 
who had bribed him, and went away and hanged 
himself. 

Surely there could not be two more unsatisfac- 
tory bargains than we have outlined in these cases. 
There is no light on the black clouds that hang 
over their sky. 

I have brought these two bargains before you 
because they are illustrations of the danger each 
of us is in of making a bargain of the same kind. 
Esau is not the only man tempted to sell his birth- 
right. Judas is not the only man in danger of 
betraying his Lord. The same temptation comes 
to every one of us. We need to be alert and watch- 
ful and on our guard, lest we make the same awful 



BAD BARGAINS IN HISTOEY 115 

blunder and bargain away sacred and holy things 
for that which will only curse us in the having. 

Judas associated with Christ for years, and 
must have been many times greatly moved by 
him and influenced by him, and yet finally sold 
him for money. Are we not in danger of allowing 
the love of this world's things to lead us to ex- 
change our religious peace, and our joyous fellow- 
ship and communion with Christ, for the glitter 
and display of earthly things ? Travelers tell us 
that the constant rubbing of the sand on Egyptian 
hieroglyphs removes every trace of color and even 
effaces the deep-cut characters from basalt rock. 
So there is great danger that the worry and hurry 
and competition of our everyday lives shall act on 
our spiritual nature as sand upon the hieroglyphs 
of the desert. If we are not careful they will take 
away the flush of fervor and the bloom of joy from 
our religion. 

A visitor went one day into the studio of a great 
artist and saw on his easel some very fine gems, 
brilliant and sparkling. On being asked why he 
kept them there the painter replied : "I keep them 
there to tone up my eyes. The tone of the eye is 
brought up again, just as the musician by his tun- 
ing-fork brings his strings up to concert pitch." 
So if amid the sandstorms of these toilful lives of 



116 THE GEEAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

ours we are to retain the rich radiance of the sonl, 
and keep our spiritual eyesight toned up, we must 
keep before us the vision of the Christ, and not 
allow ourselves to make the fatal bargain of losing 
our own soul in exchange for the perishing treas- 
ures of the world. 

A connoisseur in spiritual things says that one 
of the first discoveries made by some, as they look 
at the soul's features in the glass of Christ's perfect 
law of liberty, is that from some cause the once 
brilliant hues of their spiritual life are becoming 
dim, the tone of a richer, fuller experience is being 
lowered, and the whole temperature of their holier 
lives is gradually but surely going down. We are 
told by a recent writer that at the foot of a cliff, 
under the windows of the castle of Miramar, for 
merly the residence of the Mexican emperor, Maxi- 
milian, at a depth of eighty feet below the surface 
of the clear waters of the Adriatic Sea, is a kind of 
cage fashioned by divers in the face of the rock. 
In that cage are some of the most magnificent 
pearls in existence. Having been left unworn for 
a long time, the gems lost their color, and the ex- 
perts were unanimous in declaring that the only 
means by which they could be restored to their 
original brilliancy was by submitting them to a 
prolonged immersion in the depths of the sea. For 



BAD BARGAINS IN HISTORY 117 

a number of years they have been lying in the 
crystal depths and are gradually regaining their 
unrivaled beauty and splendor. What a story of 
loss of the color of rich experience, and of high 
spiritual excellency, does this incident of the fa- 
mous jewels suggest! O my brother, my sister, 
you cannot afford to exchange beauty of soul, 
sweetness of character, true purity and gentleness 
of spirit, for any worldly display, however bril- 
liant it may be. At the last you will realize that 
the fatal bargains of Esau and Judas were not 
more tragic and terrible than those suggested in 
our third Scripture — "For what shall it profit a 
man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his 
own soul." 

Every day we see men who have bargained away 
their freedom and liberty of spirit for the fearful 
bondage of iniquity. A celebrated detective tells 
in his memoirs how once, having discovered his 
man, he joined himself to him as a boon com- 
panion, went with him to his haunts, secured his 
confidence by long friendship, until at length, 
when all suspicion had been allayed, he got him, 
as a mere jest, to try on a pair of handcuffs, and 
then, snapping the spring that locked them, he 
took him, all helpless as he was, an easy prey. So 
there is many a sin that captures its poor slave in 



118 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

that way. It first fascinates the soul and leads it 
in paths of pleasure, thus drowning a man's fears 
and drugging his sense of danger, until the hand- 
cuffs of habit slip about the wrists and the man's 
freedom is a thing of the past. Many such a poor 
bondman will agree with me that Esau was not a 
greater fool when he sold his birthright for a mess 
of pottage, or Judas more desperately cheated 
when he sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver, 
than he who for a few passing hours of sinful 
pleasure barters away noble character, peace of 
soul, and immortal joy. 



I 



THE GOLDEN CALF 119 



CHAPTEE X 

The Goldei^ Calf 

I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.— 
Exodus xxxii, 24. 

The chief lack in Aaron was backbone. He 
was strong in his head, stronger yet in his tongue, 
but very weak in the back. He was one of the 
kind of men who are easily influenced for either 
good or evil. Yon could tell, when you saw Aaron 
and had talked with him 'Q.ve minutes, whom he had 
been spending the day with. If he had been with 
Moses he talked one way, if he had been with 
Miriam he talked another way, and if he had been 
with some cabal of grumblers, whose stomachs 
were hungering for the leeks and onions of Egypt, 
he held altogether different language. Aaron has 
plenty of descendants. How many people we know 
Avho are a sort of reprint of the man or woman who 
had their ear last. As Christ said about the seed 
that was sown on stony ground and sprang up 
quickly, but withered away on the first hot after- 
noon, they have no root in themselves. I think 



120 THE GKEAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

there is not enough stress laid on this in the educa- 
tion of children and in the development of young 
manhood and womanhood. It is quite possible for 
parents to love children with great tenderness, and 
hedge them about with every safeguard that they 
can imagine, and yet, through lack of wisely de- 
veloping the child's individuality, bring up the 
boy or girl to be a mere weakling. The parental 
influence on childhood is like scaffolding in build- 
ing a house — it is useless unless a house is being 
built so strong and solid inside that after a while 
the scaffolding may be taken down and the house 
still stand, a thing of worth and beauty. Many 
people are so brought up to lean on others that they 
have to be propped up all their lives or fall help- 
less to the ground. I get a great many letters from 
mothers about their boys, and nothing is more com- 
mon than for a mother to say : "My boy means all 
right, but he is so easily influenced. When he is 
v/ith good people, and the influences about him are 
pure, he is all right. But when he gets with the 
other class he is led astray before he realizes his 
danger." That is, he is another Aaron, who so 
long as Moses is by, with his steadfast principles 
and strong purpose to do right whatever happens, 
is all right and can say "!N^o!" with emphasis to 
temptation. But when Moses is gone, and a mob 



THE GOLDEN CALF 121 

of skeptics are around with their evil prophecies 
and worldly lusts, he is easily won over to do their 
bidding. 

Decision of character is one of the strongest and 
finest characteristics of a noble manhood. People 
who take hold of life with weak and nerveless fin- 
gers are sure to be scarred at every turn. If you 
ever pressed your way through a thicket where 
the wild stinging-nettles grew, you have probably 
learned that the way to escape being stung by them 
is to seize them in a quick and firm grasp, as 
though it were nettles that you were searching for. 
Then they do not sting. If you dawdle with them 
in a timid, fearful way, they poison your blood. 
It is so with the vexations and annoyances as well 
as the temptations to evil that often make a dense 
jungle through which we are compelled to force 
our way. If with courage we seize hold on every- 
thing that stands in the way and thrust it aside, 
pressing on to do our duty, we escape the sting and 
we come off victorious. A man who is weak and 
pliable never belongs to himself, and is the play- 
thing of many people who, in comparison, are in- 
significant in every other way except power of will. 
I would urge every young man and young woman 
to hold fast to that crown of will power by which 
they are able to say "I^o !'' to every temptation of 



122 THE GREAT SINN^ERS OF THE BIBLE 

sin, and to hold the fort of character by the lance 
of truth and purpose against all comers. 

Aaron's excuse to Moses seems very silly indeed 
to us. It could scarcely have deceived himself. 
He tries to throw all the blame upon the circum- 
stances with which he was surrounded. Moses 
seems to have understood what sort of man he 
was, for he said to Aaron, "What did this people 
unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin 
upon themf' And then Aaron undertakes to 
throw all the blame upon the fire. He admits that 
he gathered the gold earrings and jewelry, but he 
says, "I cast it into the fire, and there came out 
this calf." He does not say anything about the 
mold he had made to pour the gold into, nor about 
the engraving tool he used to polish the image. He 
is strangely forgetful of all that. It was the fire 
that did it — the awful, wicked, idolatrous fire that 
turned all that jewelry into a calf to be worshiped ! 

But before we blame Aaron too much, or regard 
him to be an imusual sinner, let us reflect upon the 
commonness of his sin in the everyday life that we 
know so well. Those of you who have read George 
Eliot's Adam Bede will remember that very strik- 
ing scene in which Mrs. Poyser, while scolding the 
clumsy Molly for her broken jug of beer, herself 
drops a much more precious jug from her angry 



THE GOLDEN CALF 123 

fingers, and exclaims : ^^Did anybody ever see the 
like? The jugs are bewitched, I think." And 
then to keep herself in countenance she proceeds 
to argue that '^There's times when the crockery 
seems alive, an' flies out o' your hand like a bird," 
and concludes with the stern philosophy that 
^^What is to be broke will be broke." How many 
of us, when arraigned by the sting of our own con- 
science, have been ready to excuse ourselves with 
Mrs. Poyser's theory that we were ^'bewitched" 
by some evil influence which was beyond our 
power. 

Bishop Phillips Brooks, commenting, with that 
clear vision which ever characterized him, on these 
deceptive but flimsy excuses for sin, pictures a 
man all gross and sensual, a man still young, who 
has already lost the freshness, glory, and purity 
of youth. You question him about his life. You 
expect him to be ashamed, repentant. But there 
is no sign of anything of the kind. He says: "I 
am the victim of circumstances. What a corrupt, 
licentious, profane age this is in which we live! 
When I was in college I got into a bad set. When 
I went into business I was surrounded by bad in- 
fluences. When I grew rich, men flattered me. 
When I grew poor, men bullied me. The world 
has made me what I am — this fiery, passionate, 



124 THE GREAT SIIT:bTERS OF THE BIBLE 

wicked world. I had in my hands the gold of my 
boyhood which God gave me. Then I cast it into 
the fire, and there came out this calf." 

Another man is not a profligate, bnt is a miser 
or a mere business machine. He has ceased to 
live above the world. All the holy dreams of self- 
sacrifice and deeds of mercy to lift the world higher 
in the scale of being, to do his part in sweetening 
the moral atmosphere of the community in which 
he lives, have as the years went on been coined into 
gold and passed over the counter. A slot-machine, 
that weighs you for a penny, has as much gener- 
ous brotherly sympathy for his kind as he. And 
yet when you talk to him about it he has the glib 
answer ready on his tongue: ^'What can you ask 
of me? This is a mercantile community. The 
business man who does not attend to his business 
goes to the wall. I am what this intense com- 
mercial life has made me. I put my life in there, 
and it came out this golden calf." And then he 
gazes fondly and lovingly at the yellow calf, and 
his knees bend under him with the old lifelong 
habit of worshiping it, even while he abuses and 
disowns it. The same thing is true of the woman 
of society who has frittered away the holiest ideals 
of womanhood in worship of the fashionable habit. 
"The fire made me this," she says, as an excuse for 



THE GOLDEN CALF 125 

all her frivolity and pride. Here is a young col- 
lege-bred man, who started out with fine dreams 
of public service and statesmanship, but who has 
yielded to the temptations of corrupt politics until 
he has degenerated into a time-serving party hack, 
and he gives, as an excuse for all his selfishness and 
partisanship, and as a whitewash for all the black 
spots on his robe of political life, "I put my prin- 
ciples into the furnace, and this thing came out." 

Parents often make the same sort of excuses for 
their indifference or sinfulness, which has marred 
and maimed and dwarfed their children in their 
highest nature. The father says of his profligate 
son, having never done one wise or vigorous thing 
to make him a noble and pure-minded man; '^I 
cannot tell how it has come. It has not been my 
fault. I put him into the world, and this came 
out." 

These excuses are all useless. It is the height of 
folly for us to attempt to throw upon circum- 
stances, or the world, or the age in which we live, 
the responsibility for the characters we are form- 
ing. Circumstances will do for us just what we 
choose to have them do. Put an acorn in the 
groimd, and it is not the choice of the soil what 
kind of a tree it will develop from that acorn ; no 

soil on earth, however fertile, could change the 
9 



126 THE GREAT SINI^ERS OF THE BIBLE 

nature of that germ and develop there a maple, a 
fir, or a pine tree. There is divine vs^ill power 
wrapped up in that little acorn which sajs: "It 
is not for you to decide, O earth, what I shall be. 
Make me an oak tree, whether you will or not." 
And an oak tree it is. Into that same earth there 
falls the germ of some poisonous plant, and though 
the soil were ever so benevolent it could not thwart 
the poisonous purpose of that seed and bring forth 
instead some sweet and pure flower. The evil pur- 
pose will have its way. Life is like that ; the world 
will do for us just what we want it to do. If we 
say to it, "Make us good, high principled, holy 
visioned," it will develop in us, despite all the 
seeming contradictions and cross currents which 
we see, a pure and noble soul. If we say to the 
world, "Make us mean and vulgar, with natures 
creeping on the earth," it will draw out of us into 
development every germ of meanness and vileness 
there is in our human nature. But it will not do 
for us to hold up our meanness and say, "It was 
my nature, and I could not help it;" or to say, 
"The world was so wicked it spoiled me." 'No-, 
let us face the truth : if we are wicked it is because 
we have chosen to be wicked. Our sins are not 
somebody else's, they are our own sins; and the 
quicker we realize our definite responsibility the 



THE GOLDEN CALF 127 

more hope is there that we may turn from them by 
confession and find forgiveness. 

Let us have an earnest heart-searching to-night. 
What have you done v^ith all the gold of innocency, 
of love, of intelligence, and of opportunity which 
God has bestowed upon you ? As you hold it up 
before yourself to-night — the result of all these 
blessings — and see your own character in the mir- 
ror of conscience or of God's commandment, is it 
pleasing to you or not ? You were once a little 
child, innocent and pure as an angel. Your hopes 
and your purposes unfold amid Christian influ- 
ences. The first songs you remember were melo- 
dies of Christian love and mercy. And now, after 
twenty or thirty years have passed, what have you 
to show for it ? If you have yielded your heart to 
the divine influences of Christianity, so that Christ 
has dwelt in fellowship with your soul, exalting 
your ideals, enlarging your vision, filling the veins 
of your thought and love with the throbbings of 
immortal courage, then you can in humility, but 
with assurance sweet and comforting, lift your 
life up into the presence of God and say, with Jean 
Paul Eichter, "O my God, I have done the best 
I could with the material which thou hast given 
me." 

But if you have chosen your own way, have 



128 THE GEE AT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

turned away from the fellowship of Christ, have 
hardened your heart against his love, have refused 
to submit your will to him, have let your affections 
run on the ground, twining about the burned 
stumps and rotten logs of worldliness, until to- 
night there is in your conscience the bitter feeling 
of remorse, the stinging conviction that you have 
sinned against God and against your own soul, I 
come to you with the ringing challenge of Moses, 
and cry unto you with all the earnestness of my 
soul, "Who is on the Lord's side V 

Do not deceive yourself in making the answer. 
Do not imagine you are on the Lord's side simply 
because your conscience condemns you and you 
are conscious of a drawing toward salvation. Both 
Agrippa and Felix were mightily stirred under the , 
preaching of Paul, and were conscience-stricken 
until they trembled under conviction of sin and 
expected to hear Paul again, but they never be- 
came Christians. 

Do not suppose that a mere attendance on 
church and a nominal sympathy with the church 
puts you on the Lord's side. Herod liked to hear 
John the Baptist preach. He was greatly fasci- 
nated with John's message and his style of giving 
it. The record says that he heard John "gladly ;" 
and yet, instead of coming over on the side of John 



THE GOLDEN CALF 129 

and Christ, he beheaded the brave preacher and 
became a murderer. 

!N"o one should consider himseK on the Lord's 
side unless he is keeping the commandments. 
Christ says, " He that keepeth mj commandments, 
he it is that loveth me." An open confession of 
Christ which all the world may see, with which 
the heart and life agree, is the only way of putting 
ourselves really on the Lord's side. An Irish gen- 
tleman, pointing to a young man, once said, "Is 
he an O. O. ?" ''What do you mean by an O. 0. ?" 
"I mean," was the reply, "is he out-and-out for 
Christ ?" That is what Christ desires of each one 
of us. It is not only to be sorry for sin, but to 
turn away from sin in heart and in conduct, that 
will bring us into saving relation with Christ. 

Archdeacon Madden, of Liverpool, relates a 
curious experience with a dying gambler. He was 
once called out at midnight to see a dying man. 
He found him in a wretched and dirty back bed- 
room in a dingy street of Liverpool. He could not 
have been more than thirty years of age. He was 
propped up in bed and the gray look of death was 
upon his face. 

As the minister entered the young man turned 
eagerly to him, and, holding out his hand, he said, 
"I'm dying, and I am not ready — ^not ready." 



130 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

Just as the minister was about to speak the 
young man suddenly gasped out, "John, John, 
hand me those things on the table." John came 
forward and laid upon the bed a sporting paper, 
a pack of cards, a set of dice, a bottle of whisky, 
and some race lists. There was a deliberation 
about the whole business which convinced Dr. 
Madden that the matter had been talked over be- 
tween the men. When all were spread out in due 
order, the dying man again turned to him and 
said: "Look, Vicar; those things have been the 
ruin of me; they have been a curse to me, and I 
want to turn my back upon them all. I want you 
to help me to do it." 

Again he was about to speak, when suddenly 
stooping down he gathered them all and thrust 
them into the minister's hands with the words: 
"Shove them up my back." 

The minister was so staggered by the request 
that he stammered out, "What — ^what do you 
mean ?" 

"I want you," he said, "as God's minister, to 
shove them up underneath my shirt. I want to 
turn my back upon them. I want to put them be- 
hind my back. I want God to see that I have done 
with them forever." 

Dr. Madden did not know whether to laugh or 



THE GOLDEN CALF 131 

to cry. It was all so absurd and yet so pathetic. 
The man was in dead earnest. He had evidently 
thought it over, and made it as an act of true re- 
pentance. 

The minister said to him, "I will do what you 
wish, but I will kneel down first, and you will 
repeat a prayer after me." He knelt, and then 
solemnly and earnestly the dying man repeated 
after him these words: "Father, I have sinned 
against heaven and before thee. I renounce all my 
sins ; from the bottom of my heart I renounce them 
all. Father, receive thy prodigal son, and forgive 
me for Jesus Christ^s sake. Amen." 

Dr. Madden then rose from his knees and car- 
ried out the sufferer's wishes. To all those in that 
chamber of death it was a most solemn sacramental 
rite. It was the outward and visible sign of the 
inward and spiritual grace of a true repentance. 
There the minister stood and held the things that 
had cursed the poor fellow's young manhood, 
ruined a promising career, and brought him down 
to poverty and a premature grave. As he held 
those emblems of evil behind his back he told him 
of that Saviour who "carried our sins," upon 
whom the Lord has laid the iniquities of us all. 

I am sure that that strange but earnest picture 
ought to bear a message from God to some of you 



132 THE GREAT SINN^ERS OF THE EIBLE 

who hear me now. Do not wait until the awful 
emergency of death to put jour sins behind your 
back. Turn from them now and ask God to put 
them behind his back forever. King Hezekiah 
was in great trouble and says of his deliverance: 
''Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but 
thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the 
pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins 
behind thy back." God is no respecter of persons. 
He loves your soul as much as he did Hezekiah's. 
If you will come to him in repentance and con- 
fession, he will cast all your sins behind his back. 



THE COWAEBS AND THE GIANTS 133 



CHAPTEE XI 

The Cowards and the Giants 

And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which 
come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as 
grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. — Numbers 
xiii, 33. 

It was unnecessary for these cowards to have 
added that last phrase, "and so we were in their 
sight." If a man has no self-respect he may be 
very sure that no one else will respect him. A man 
who feels like a grasshopper is pretty certain to look 
like a grasshopper. His cowardice will make itself 
evident enough to his enemies. Small men loom 
large when they have great courage, but giants are 
like grasshoppers when fear has taken possession 
of them. 

These ten cowards brought back as enthusiastic 
a report about the beauty and fertility of the coun- 
try as did Joshua and Caleb. They admitted that 
it was a land flowing with milk and honey. 
They came back loaded down with pomegranates 
and figs and grapes. Indeed, they found one vine- 
yard in the valley of the brook of Eshcol where the 



134 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

grapes grew in such enormous clusters that they 
broke off a cluster and hung it over a staff which 
two men carried between them. But all the en- 
thusiasm over the richness of the soil and the de- 
sirability of the land as a home for their people was 
more than overbalanced by their fears. They de- 
clared that the enemy was intrenched in walled 
cities, and that they were people of enormous size. 
The men were giants, whose fathers were giants 
before them, and so mighty were these men of 
Anak that they made the Hebrews feel like grass- 
hoppers in their presence. Therefore it was use- 
less, in their opinion, to undertake to go in and 
possess the land, even though God had promised it 
to them. Their conclusion was that God himself 
was not strong enough to whip these giants with 
such little men as they were. 

There were two men, however, out of that dozen 
spies who were not of the grasshopper grade. 
Joshua and Caleb had taken in the size of the giants 
as well as the rest, but not feeling like grasshoppers 
themselves, but rather like the courageous men that 
they were, they took a different view of the out- 
look. 

They declared that Moses and his army, under 
the divine leadership, were easily able to overcome 
these giants, and urged that they go up at once ancl 



THE COWARDS AND THE GIANTS 135 

possess the country. But the ten cowards overruled 
them, and succeeded in turning back the people to 
wander for forty years in the wilderness, suffering 
intolerable hardships, when they might have en- 
tered the land of promise and possessed it inside of 
forty days. 

It is interesting to notice that these cowards were 
all destroyed by the plague, and the precious bodies 
that they were so careful of, and which they were 
so afraid to risk in fight under God's direction, were 
very shortly in their graves. The two brave men 
of the lot were the only ones that lived to see the 
final conquest of Canaan. God is not always on 
the side of ^"^the strongest battalions," as E'apoleon 
sneered; but he is ever on the side of the men of 
brave and noble purpose, for they are ever on his 
side. God has so ordered the universe that the 
bravest thing a man can do is also the safest, in a 
worldly as well as a spiritual sense. 

We have here a very interesting illustration of 
what is going on to-day. Many people in Christian 
lands have come up so close to the promised land of 
a Christian life that they have become fascinated 
with its beauty and enjoyment. They have seen 
enough of the spiritual pomegranates and figs and 
gTapes that grow in the land of Canaan, the land of 
forgiveness and Christian communion, to greatly 



136 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

attract them, and they long to enter. They will 
agree to anything you say about the desirability of 
a Christian life. They admit that it is the happiest 
and most secure life to live. They declare their 
own desires to be Christians and hope some time to 
enter and live and die in the midst of the joyful ex- 
periences of the Christian, but just now the difficul- 
ties are too great and the giants are too large for 
them to undertake such a conquest ; and so, while 
they look longingly on the vineyards of Eshcol, 
they wander back into the wilderness with its sting- 
ing serpents, its deadly enemies, and its graves of 
lust. 

I am persuaded that I speak to some here now 
who are exactly in this position. The Christian 
life seems to you, as it is, the only true and happy 
life for anybody to live. Some day you expect to 
be a Christian; but you are putting it off to some 
indefinite time in the future. You are like the 
poet who sings: 

"There are wonderful things we are going to do, 

Some other day; 
And harbors we hope to drift into, 

Some other day. 
With folded hands and oars that trail, 
We watch and wait for a favoring gale 
To fill the folds of an idle sail, 

^ome other day. 



THE COWARDS AND THE GIANTS 137 

"We know we must toil if ever we win, 

Some other day; 
But we say to ourselves, there's time to begin 

Some other day; 
And so, deferring, we loiter on, 
Until at last we find withdrawn 
The strength of the hope we leaned upon. 

Some other day. 

"And when we are old and our race is run, 

Some other day. 
We fret for the things that might have been done, 

Some other day. 
We trace the path that leads us where 
The beckoning hand of grim despair 
Leads us yonder out of the here, 

Some other day/* 

'No man deals wisely witli any giant sin that 
stands in his way who does not seize hold upon it at 
once and throttle it. A man recovering from a 
debauch was moaning to himself: "I must quit! I 
must reform! I must stop!" "Don't say dat, 
boss/' put in a colored man. "Dat's no good. Say, 
'I am quit. I is reformed. I is done gone stopped.* 
Do it now, boss, an' den you won't forget it." 

That colored man had good honest common 
sense. The sin which you are putting off to some 
future time to battle with is growing more giant' 
like every day of delay. 

But in thinking of becoming a Christian, and of 



138 THE GREAT SIl^KERS OF THE BIBLE 

the difficulties tliat stand in the way, we must never 
lose sight of the divine help. That which made the 
difference between Caleb and Joshua and the ten 
cowards among the spies was that Caleb and Joshua 
had great faith in God, and believed that God 
would keep his word and make their arms victori- 
ous over the giants. All that it was necessary for 
them to do was to obey God and go forward doing 
their best. These other men would not have felt 
like grasshoppers in the presence of the sons of 
Anak if they had had the consciousness that God 
was with them to give them power to overcome 
their enemies. So you are not asked to become 
a Christian alone, nor to pursue the Christian life 
in your own strength. You are to have a mighty 
reinforcement in the presence of the divine Spirit 
strengthening you against every battle with tempta- 
tion. God will take that fearful spirit out of your 
heart when you obey him and forsake your sins, 
and will give you a new heart ; and the giants will 
seem like grasshoppers when you face them in this 
new courage and with this new assurance of God's 
alliance with you. 

This power and willingness of God to change a 
man's heart and renew his nature is not a new 
thing, but is as old as God's dealings with men. 
Away back in the book of Job you may find this 



THE COWARDS AND THE GIANTS 139 

remarkable description of the transformation of the 
soul : "If there be a messenger with him, an inter- 
preter, one among a thousand, to show unto man 
his uprightness ; then he is gracious unto him, and 
saith. Deliver him from going down to the pit: I 
have found a ransom. His flesh shall be fresher 
than a child's : he shall return to the days of his 
youth : he shall pray unto God, and he will be fa- 
vorable unto him: and he shall see his face with 
joy; for he will render unto man his righteous- 
ness." It is utterly futile to undertake a Christian 
life without this divine conversion, this surrender 
of yourself to the leadership of Jesus Christ, who 
is not only our Saviour, but our Captain in all our 
warfare against the giants of sin. The divine ex- 
altation that will come to us in such fellowship will 
cause us to rejoice in the face of the enemy. 

Spurgeon was once out riding, and was laughing, 
as he went, at the top of his voice. A friend met 
him and asked the cause of his mirth. "O," 
answered the great-hearted Christian, "I was just 
thinking about ^My grace is sufficient.' I was 
thinking how big grace is and how little I am." 

But, after all, the initiative is in our hands. God 
would not give the promised land to the Hebrews 
unless they entered the land in obedience to him 
and fought for it. That is in accord with universal 



140 THE GREAT SIITNEES OF THE BIBLE 

law. That was a remarkable scene in the life of 
Joan of Arc, when, as a girl of seventeen, she was 
brought into the presence of all the great priests 
and cardinals of the kingdom and submitted to a 
most severe and searching examination. One of 
the priests said: "Joan, you say that it is the will of 
God that the king should be crowned. If it is the 
will of God why, then, he will be crowned, and he 
needs not your help." "Aye,'' said Joan, "it is 
true that it is the will of God, and he giveth the vic- 
tory; but men must fight.'' Garibaldi said some- 
thing very much like that at I^aples in 1860: "My 
children, liberty is from God, liberty is from 
heaven. But," he added, "you must all rise ; you 
must fight for Italy." So freedom from sin, sal- 
vation from the guilt of sin, is through Jesus 
Christ; but we ourselves must rise and fight with 
him for the overthrow of every giant of evil in our 
hearts and in the world about us. 

It need not take a long time. This Christian 
Canaan may be entered by you at once if you are 
ready to obey God. Bishop ISTewman tells an in- 
teresting story of the conversion of that great citi- 
zen of Ohio, Chief Justice Chase. Bishop I^ew- 
man had observed, during the time he was pastor of 
Metropolitan Church, Washington, that when he 
was administering communion Chief Justice Chase 



THE COWAEDS AND THE GIANTS 141 

always retired. He was impressed that lie ouglit to 
talk with him about the matter, so he asked him 
why he did not come to the sacrament, to which he 
replied, ^'I am not a Methodist and I am not good 
enough." Dr. JSTewman replied, "We will omit con- 
sideration of the former point and speak of the 
latter." Then he turned to the communion invi- 
tation and read: "Ye that do truly and earnestly 
repent of your sins — " "Stop right there," said 
the Chief Justice, and for an hour they talked upon 
repentance. 

Soon after, as he was administering the com- 
munion, Mr. Chase was present. After all had 
communed who seemed to wish to do so, Dr. New- 
man waited still, and said: "Is there another who 
wishes to come ? If you feel worthy you are not fit 
to come. If you feel unworthy, but repent of sin 
and trust in Christ, come." "With that the Chief 
Justice arose and with bowed head came to the 
altar ; but, instead of kneeling, he fell down upon 
the floor. The whole congregation lingered and 
prayed for a soul that was seeking God. By and 
by the minister administered the communion to 
him. When he rose upon his feet he held his head 
erect, and the smile of forgiving grace was on his 
face. 

!N'ot long after, Judge Miller, on the eve of his de- 
10 



142 



THE GREAT SINNEBS OF THE BIBLE 



parture for Europe, came to see Mr. Cliase. The 
latter took him with him in his carriage to visit a 
sick friend. Miller turned and said to him, "How 
are you ?" Said he, "Brother Miller, I am well in 
mind, feeble in body ; but Christ is my satisfying 
portion. I have given up all to him.'' "Well,'' 
said Miller, "I wish I could say that. I have been 
trying for eighteen years to solve the problem." 
Said Chase, "I have solved it, and Christ is my sat- 
isfying portion." Two or three days later they 
went to call him in the morning and there was no 
answer. The Chief Justice was dead. How happy 
the solution of life's great problem on that Sunday 
morning a few weeks before 1 

H ow happj it would be for you if I could arouse 
now solveithe same great problem in the 
same way ! Tou are standing outside of the prom- 
ised land, hesitating to enter because of difficulties 
that seem so giantlike in their proportions that you 
are afraid to confront them. But, thank God, you 
are not asked to confront them alone, and Jesus 
Christ will receive you, sinful as you are, and 
give you a new heart of courage and love, and 
strengthen your arm to fight, so that you may come 
out conqueror over all foes that stand in your way. 
You will find the name of Jesus a name before 
which every giant of sin will fall. 




THE COWARDS AND THE GIANTS 143 

One of the magazines has a new telling, by 
William Converse, of an old story of the Crusades. 
It is the story of how Gilbert Becket was taken pris- 
oner by a Saracen emir and was for years his slave. 
For a long time he was treated with great cruelty; 
but finally, one day when he was being beaten, 
Roesa, the daughter of the emir, interfered in his 
behalf, and afterward, through her pleading with 
her father, his lot was greatly improved. As time 
went on he came to love this young girl, and the 
maiden herself loved the Crusader, whose life she 
had saved, with even a greater devotion. The emir 
at length discovered his daughter's secret, and, 
more than that, that the young man had explained 
and defended to her the doctrine of the Cross. 
Fearful for his daughter's faith, he purposely gave 
the young captive a chance to escape. He sent him 
on horseback to a distant city. The youth de- 
termined to gain his freedom. He parted tenderly 
with the Saracen maid. Whatever her suspicions, 
she kept them quiet. She met him on horseback, 
as he was ready to set out, and gave him a silken 
purse into which she had woven some of her own 
hair. He laid it next his heart, and sped away to 
return no more. 

An adventurous voyage brought him to London. 
He wrote to the emir that he would send him a ran- 



144 THE GREAT SIIS^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

som of gold. "Englishmen/' he declared, "are like 
birds ; for, though caged within gilded wires, they 
love freedom/' 

The daughter sank under the eclipse of her hope, 
and began to languish. Her father was anxious. 
The healing men were summoned, but could not 
minister to a mind diseased. 

All at once the maiden rallied and began to gain 
strength and vigor. A new purpose had seized her. 
Her lover had not fled because he did not love her, 
but because freedom was a man's true life. She 
would go to him. 

She soon set sail for England. Erom the port 
she sent a note to her father. 

She knew but two English words — "Gilbert" 
and "London." Erom port to port she found her 
way by using the latter word. She at length 
reached the English metropolis. Then came the 
great difficulty — to find among that seething mass 
of humanity one man whose Christian name only 
she knew. Her Arabic was gibberish to those Eng- 
lish-speaking people. To all the crowds that sur- 
rounded her, regarding her as one who seemed 
"crazed with some sorrow," she spoke but one word. 
"Gilbert! Gilbert!" she cried, as she went from 
street to street. "Here comes the Gilbert maiden," 
people would exclaim to one another as they saw 



THE COWAEDS AND THE GIANTS 146 

her. One day slie strayed to Cheapside. As usual, 
a crowd gathered. ^^It is the Gilbert Saracen 
maid," cried the people around. 

But then a strange thing happened. Out from 
a house rushed a servant of Gilbert Becket, who 
strode along, pushing the throng aside, and came 
close to the maiden. "It is she!" he exclaimed, in 
glad recognition. "I thought I could not mistake; 
it is the Saracen maid!" They told him she had 
been calling for Gilbert. "And Gilbert she shall 
see, to his joy and hers, as quickly as she can cross 
the street and get within yon gate and door," said 
the servant. 

The meeting was unspeakably glad. That which 
Gilbert had never dared to believe or ask had come 
to pass. Boesa had given up her father's home 
for him. Later she also gave up the Moslem faith 
and became a happy Christian. Gilbert Becket 
and Boesa were married. Gilbert became sheriff 
of London, and the Saracen maid became the 
mother of Thomas a Becket, the famous chancellor 
and martyr. 

The two talismanic words that brought triumph 
to the Saracen maid were "Gilbert" and "London." 
But there are two talismanic words greater than 
those. They are "Jesus" and "Heaven!" I care 
not how far away in the desert of sin you are, nor 



146 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

how hopeless and despairing your present outlook 
for a holy and a pure life^ if you will turn your 
face away from your sin, with these two talismanic 
words upon your lips and in your heart, you shall 
in God's good time stand before the gates of heaven, 
and they will open to your weary feet at the blessed 
name of "Jesus." Take them as your watchwords 
from this very hour. 



THE ANGEL THAT BLOCKS THE WAY 147 



CHAPTER XII 

The Angel that Blocks the Way 

And Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I have 
sinned; for I linew not that thou stoodest in the way 
against me: now therefore, if it displease thee, I will get 
me back again.— ^wm&ers xxii, 34. 

Balaam was a brilliant and ambitious man. His 
two weak points were his longing for money and 
his longing for applause. God had given him re- 
markable gifts, but instead of walking humbly as 
a prophet of God, and letting his light shine so that 
those who saw his good works should be led to 
glorify God, he sought to draw popular attention 
to himself, and succeeded in doing so. The peo- 
ple about, in surrounding countries, came to be- 
lieve that Balaam had the power to curse a nation 
and cause it to fall to pieces in ruin, or, on the 
other hand, the power to bless a nation and cause 
it to become prosperous and triumphant. And so 
Balak, of the Moabites, sent a message to Balaam 
and sought to bribe him to curse the people of 
Israel, and said to him: "Come now therefore, I 
pray thee, curse me this people j for they are too 



148 THE GREAT SITTlSrERS OF THE BIBLE 

mighty for me : peradventure I shall prevail, that 
we maj smite them, and that I may drive them 
out of the land: for I wot that he whom thou 
blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest is 
cursed.'' 

l^ow Balaam himself was not at all deceived. 
He knew that he had no power to bless or curse of 
himself, and that neither his blessing nor his curse 
w^ould amount to anything unless he was simply 
the voice proclaiming God's purpose. But Ba- 
laam's eyes glistened at the rich presents that were 
sent and he wanted to keep the gold, and he asked of 
the Lord the privilege of going with the messengers 
and doing their bidding, but was refused. The 
messengers went home, but were followed by a 
still more honorable company of princes with a 
still richer bribe. And this time Balak sends 
word to Balaam: "Let nothing, I pray thee, hin- 
der thee from coming unto me : for I will promote 
thee unto very great honor, and I will do whatso- 
ever thou sayest unto me : come therefore, I pray 
thee, curse me this people." 

Balak was led to do this, no doubt, because of 
the peculiar way in which Balaam had refused the 
first bribe. He did not say, out and out, "It is 
wrong, and I cannot do it. The people of Israel 
are blessed of God and nothing can stand against 



THE Aj^GEL that BLOCKS THE WAY 149 

them." But instead lie had left the impression on 
the messengers that personally he would like to 
go (which was the truth), while he regretfully 
said to them, "The Lord refuseth to give me leave 
to go with von." Balaam was like a man who 
thinks it is wrong to drink wine, or to give him- 
self up to some questionable indulgence, and when 
tempted does not saj, out and out, "It is against 
my conscience and I will not do it," but hems and 
haws, and looks sorry, and says, "I should like to 
do it, but really I ought not to, for I am a church 
member, you know;" or, "I was not raised to do 
that kind of thing." Such a man has already be- 
gun to compromise with the devil, and is certain to 
have further trouble with that temptation. If a 
thing is wrong, say so straight out, and say "^o !" 
with an emphasis that will make the devil's hair 
stand on end. Thus resisted he will flee from you 
every time. But Balaam dallied with the matter, 
and so, no doubt, some shrewd messenger in that 
first committee whispered to Balak, "Although 
Balaam refused, I saw his weak spot : he likes to 
be flattered, and he loves gold ; send him a bigger 
bribe, and send him a committee of princes, and 
you will catch him sure enough." So when the 
new committee come back with their richer bribes 
we can see that Balaam is pleased to be tempted. 



150 THE GBEAT SIISTNEES OF THE BIBLE 

although he blusters and sajs, "If Balak would 
give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot 
go beyond the word of the Lord my God, to do less 
or more." He was very careful, however, not to 
send them away with that sort of an answer, but 
begged the committee to stay over night, and let 
him entertain them, while he asked again permis- 
sion of the Lord to accept their offer. 

How many of you have made that same blun- 
der! Instead of driving away the tempter, you 
have entertained him as a guest. 'No man can 
help temptation coming. The holiest people on 
earth have been tempted. Jesus Christ himself 
was grievously tempted of the devil. But there is 
a vast difference between saying, "Get thee behind 
me, Satan!" and "Come in, and stay over night, 
and I will see if I cannot ^x it up some way so 
that I can do what you want." It is a fatal mis- 
take to thus play with the tempter. When Balaam 
asks permission of God the second time to do what 
God has told him is wrong, we are certain he is 
sinning against his own conscience. In matters 
of simple judgment about worldly things it is well 
to take time for reflection, but it has been well said 
that in matters of duty "first thoughts are best." 
Frederick W. Kobertson says the first thoughts 
that come to us about a question of conscience are 



THE A^TGEL THAT BLOCKS THE WAY 151 

more fresh, more pure, and have more of God in 
them. There is nothing like the first glance we 
get at duty, before there has been any special 
pleading of our affections or inclinations. Duty 
is never uncertain at first. It is only after we 
have got involved in the mazes and sophistries of 
wishing that things were different from what they 
are that duty seems indistinct. Taking time to 
consider a duty is usually only seeking after some 
excuse for explaining it away. A man is usually 
simply juggling with his own conscience when he 
takes time to think over a question of direct right 
and wrong in conduct. Deliberation is often only 
dishonesty. God's guidance is plain when we are 
true. 

Balaam knew very well what was right, but he 
wanted to make money and win applause without 
bringing on himself the curse of God. He tried to 
find a way to do what Balak wanted him to do, and 
yet not subject himself to divine punishment. He 
went to God to try and get his duty altered, instead 
of seeking to find out what his duty was. But 
right and wrong cannot be juggled with like that. 
Even God cannot say that a thing is right to-day 
and wrong to-morrow. 

Am I speaking any man's heart story to him to- 
night? Am I uncovering any woman's soul to 



152 THE GEEAT SIoS^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

herself ? If so, I pray God that the Holy Spirit 
will strengthen you in your weakness, so that you 
may have the courage to be honest with your own 
soul and turn away from the sin that is tempting 
you to everlasting disaster. 

The principal theme, however, to which I wish 
to call your special attention at this time, lies far- 
ther along in the story. That night, while the 
second committee were lodged in Balaam^s house, 
God told Balaam that if the men should call him in 
the morning, he should rise up and go with them, 
and should speak the word which God gave him. 
Balaam was then wild with greed, and, seeming 
to have gained his point, did not wait for the 
men to call him in the morning, but rose up and 
saddled his ass and went with the princes of Moab. 
And the record says, "God's anger was kindled 
because he went : and the angel of the Lord stood 
in the way for an adversary against him. N^ow he 
was riding upon his ass, and his two servants were 
with him. And the ass saw the angel of the Lord 
standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his 
hand ; and the ass turned aside out of the way, and 
went into the field ; and Balaam smote the ass, to 
turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord 
stood in a path of the vineyards, a wall being on 
this side, and a wall on that side. And when the 



THE ANGEL THAT BLOCKS THE WAY 158 

ass saw the angel of the Lord, she thrust herself 
unto the wall, and crushed Balaam's foot against 
the wall : and he smote her again. And the angel 
of the Lord went further, and stood in a narrow 
place, where was no way to turn either to the right 
hand or to the left. And when the ass saw the 
angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam: 
and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he smote the 
ass with a staff. And the Lord opened the mouth 
of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have 
I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these 
three times ? And Balaam said unto the ass. Be- 
cause thou hast mocked me : I would there were a 
sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee. 
And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, 
upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine 
unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto 
thee ? And he said, 'Naj. Then the Lord opened 
the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the 
Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in 
his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell 
flat on his face. And the angel of the Lord said 
unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass 
these three times ? Behold, I went out to with- 
stand thee, because thy way is perverse before me : 
and the ass saw me, and turned from me these 
three times : unless she had turned from me, surely 



154 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive. 
And Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I 
have sinned ; for I knew not that thou stoodest in 
the way against me : now therefore, if it displease 
thee, I will get me back again." 

See the tenderness and loving-kindness of God 
manifested in the presence of the angel standing in 
the way of this tempted man going into sin, and 
seeking to turn him from his course not only once, 
but twice and thrice ! The first time he is turned 
out of the way gently, without harm; the second 
time his foot is crushed; the third time he is 
brought to the ground, and only when in that help- 
less condition are his eyes opened to behold God's 
angel blocking the way. This, then, is the mes- 
sage I want to put on your hearts, that God is 
seeking always to block our way into sin; that it 
is never easy to go on a path of wrongdoing. 
There is many a thorn in that path — thorns that 
are not planted there because God hates us, but 
because he loves us. The angel did not block the 
way with drawn sword because God took delight 
in frightening Balaam, nor was his foot crushed 
because God took pleasure in giving him pain, nor 
was he overthrown and humiliated because God 
was pleased at his downfall; but the infinite 
pity of God was blocking his way into sin, making 



THE ANGEL THAT BLOCKS THE WAY 155 

it impossible for him to go recklessly, without 
knowing his danger, on the road to ruin. 

The Bible is full of such illustrations of God's 
kindly and loving intervention in behalf of sin- 
ning souls. Even John, the beloved disciple, at 
one time was so filled with anger and the spirit of 
revenge against a town that had refused to admit 
Christ and his disciples, that he craved permission 
of Jesus to call down fire from heaven to consume 
the people. Jesus turned to him with severe re- 
buke, and said, "Ye know not what manner of 
spirit ye are of." So far as we know, that is the 
only rebuke that John ever received from his di- 
vine Lord. He does not seem to ever have needed 
another. How it must have comforted John as he 
lay with his head on the bosom of Jesus at the last 
supper, or as he received the final commission from 
the cross to care for the Saviour's mother, that the 
Lord had dealt thus faithfully with him, and that 
that keen rebuke had come as an angel from God 
to block the path down which he was tempted to- 
ward a revengeful and cruel spirit ! If John had 
not heeded that angel in the path, he never would 
have been known in after history as the "beloved 
disciple." 

And on the night of Christ's arrest Peter had an 
experience of the angel that blocked the way. He 



166 THE GREAT SIIS^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

had had one experience before, when Christ had 
told him of his coming crucifixion, and Peter had 
declared that it could never happen. Christ had 
blocked his way with the stern rebuke, ^^Get thee 
behind me, Satan; thou art an offense unto me." 
But on that awful night of Christ's betrayal Peter 
fell again into sin, and denied his Lord. Then 
Jesus with a single look blocked his way to utter 
ruin. It did not crush his foot, as in Balaam's 
case; but it did more — it broke his heart. That 
was enough for Peter, and from that bitter night 
he turned about to lifelong fidelity to Christ. 

Paul, too, knew what it was to have the angel 
block his way while on the downward path. The 
whole world has been interested in that midday 
vision on the way to Damascus, when, his heart full 
of bigotry and cruelty, suddenly the light shone 
above that of the noonday sun, and the heavenly 
voice called to him: ^^Saul, Saul, why persecutest 
thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against 
the pricks." That to Saul meant salvation. It ef- 
fectually blocked the path that led to hell. He 
turned back, to be no longer Saul, the persecutor, 
but to become Paul, the triumphant Christian 
apostle whose life was to be poured out as an obla- 
tion before God. 

God has not changed in his loving-kindness to- 



THE AITGEL THAT BLOCKS THE WAY 157 

ward lost sinners. His tenderness still seeks after 
men and women who are tempted and led captive 
on the way to ruin. It is not easy, I repeat, to go 
that way. ISTot one of you can do it without kick- 
ing against the pricks; not one of you can go on 
in sin without facing the angel of God with his 
drawn sword. He will bring you easily into the 
kingdom if he can ; if he cannot bring you gently, 
he will bring you in at the cost of a crushed foot 
or of a broken heart. He will even follow you into 
the throes of bankruptcy or sickness, or defeat of 
all your hopes or plans, if thereby he can save you 
from eternal hurt and destruction. There are 
those that hear me to-night who know what all this 
means. You remember when you would not obey 
God in days of prosperity and joy; but you did 
come to obey him in the face of rebuke and 
sorrow. 

I doubt not that some of you this very night are 
in the narrow place of the vineyards, with the wall 
on either hand, and God's angel standing in the 
way. O that your eyes may be opened to see, and 
that you may have wisdom to turn from the path 
of danger ere it is too late ! 

Some of you have met with God's rebuke ; you 

have found that the way of the transgressor is 

hard ; you have kicked against the goad, but it has 
11 



158 THE GEEAT SINTSTEBS OF THE BIBLE 

hardened jour heart and made you bitter in your 
thoughts toward God. I want to urge upon you 
to-night the unwisdom of that. I want to show you 
that it is not reasonable. It is not hate, but love, 
that has impelled the Lord to make of your sinful 
way a way of sorrow and disappointment. 

Above everything I long to do justice to my Lord 
and to your Saviour. I would that I had language 
and genius to paint before you the picture of his 
compassion, of his sympathy and love. I would 
that I could cause you to appreciate the brooding 
tenderness of that shepherd-spirit that hovers about 
you and seeks to bring you back from danger and 
save you from harm. • I would that I could make 
you see with new eyes the ninety and nine gathered 
in the fold, and the Shepherd turning away into 
the darkness, going down into the deep canon, 
peering into the thickets, seeking, calling longingly 
after you, the lost lamb. Paul Laurence Dunbar 
seems to have caught the real spirit of the Master's 
love in his little hymn: 

"0 irr lamb out in the col', 
De Mastah call you to de fol*, 

O UT lamb! 
He hyeah you bleatin' on de hill; 
Gome hyeah an' keep yo' mou'nin' still, 

O li'l' lamb! 



THE ANGEL THAT BLOCKS THE WAT 159 

"De Mastah sen' de Shepud fo'f ; 
He wandah souf, he wandah no'f, 

O irr lamb! 
He wandah eas', he wandah wes': 
De win' a-wrenchin' at his breas', 

O li'l' lamb! 

"O, tell de Shepud whaih you hide; 
He want you walkin' by his side, 

O li'l' lamb! 
He know you weak, he know you so*; 
But come, don't stay away no mo', 

O li'l' lamb! 

"An' af ah while de lamb he hyeah 
De Shepud's voice a-callin' cleah — 

Sweet li'l' lamb! 
He answah f om de branches thick, 
O Shepud, I's a-comin' quick— 
O liT lamb!" 



160 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEK XIII 
The Melancholy Fate of Me. Facing-both- 

WAYS 

Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword. 
— Numbers xxxi, 8. 

It is no disgrace to be killed on the battlefield if 
you are fighting honorably for what you believe to 
be right. But Balaam died the death of a traitor. 
For this is our old acquaintance, the prophet whom 
Balak sought to bribe to curse the Israelites, and 
who asked God for that privilege and was refused. 
But here w^e have the last picture in Balaam's 
earthly life, and he is dying on the battlefield with 
Israel's spears in his bosom, an out-and-out foe of 
the people whom God had blessed. For Balaam 
had finally gone with the messengers from Balak, 
and Balak had prepared altars and offered up sac- 
rifices, and Balaam had sought to change the mind 
of God in regard to the people of Israel. But every 
time when Balaam spoke his message, it was a bless- 
ing and not a curse that was uttered. At the very 
first altar, when Balak and his princes were stand- 



TATE OF MR. FACIITG-BOTH-WAYS 161 

ing about and were listening in breathless silence 
to the words of Balaam, we can imagine the disap- 
pointment in their faces as he began to say : "How 
shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed ? or how 
shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied ? For 
from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the 
hills I behold him. . . . Who can count the 
dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of 
Israel ? Let me die the death of the righteous, and 
let my last end be like his !" 'No wonder Balak 
said in his disgust, "I took thee to curse mine 
enemies, and behold, thou hast blessed them alto- 
gether !" 

Balak, however, had persistence worthy of a 
better cause. He took Balaam to another point, 
where he could look out over the tents of Israel, and 
on top of Mount Pisgah Balaam built seven altars, 
and offered a bullock and a ram on every altar; but 
when he stood up again to speak to Balak and his 
listening associates, this is what he said: "God is 
not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of 
man, that he should repent . hath he said, and shall 
he not do it ? or hath he spoken, and shall he not 
make it good ? Behold, I have received command- 
ment to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot 
reverse it. He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, 
neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the 



162 THE GREAT SIK^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king 
is among them. God brought them out of Egypt ; 
he hath as it were the strength of a unicorn. Surely 
there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is 
there any divination against Israel: according to 
this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, 
What hath God wrought ! Behold, the people shall 
rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a 
young lion : he shall not lie down until he eat of the 
prey, and drink the blood of the slain." 

But Balak was determined to try once more, and 
he said to Balaam, "Come, I pray thee, I will bring 
thee unto another place; peradventure it will 
please God that thou may est curse me them from 
thence." And so on the top of Mount Peor seven 
altars more were builded and offerings made upon 
them. But Balak was more crushed than ever 
when he heard Balaam's poetic outburst explain- 
ing the vision that came to him at the altar : "How 
goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, 
O Israel ! As the valleys are they spread forth, as 
gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign-aloes 
which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees 
beside the waters. He shall pour the water out of 
his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, 
and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his 
kingdom shall be exalted. God brought him forth 



FATE OF ME. FACING-BOTH-WAYS 163 

out of Egypt ; he hath as it were the strength of a 
unicorn : he shall eat up the nations of his enemies, 
and shall break their bones, and pierce them 
through with his arrows. He couched, he lay down 
as a lion, and as a great lion: who shall stir him 
up ? Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is 
he that curseth thee." 

At last Balak gives up his hope and in his anger 
warns Balaam to get out of his sight : "Therefore 
now flee thou to thy place: I thought to promote 
thee unto gTeat honor ; but, lo, the Lord hath kept 
thee back from honor." 

Happy for Balaam if he had really parted from 
Balak and his vicious temptations at that time. 
But the man was not at peace in his own heart. 
He was not a genuine man. He was not sincere. 
He did not want to displease God, but he wanted 
still more to please himseK. He cared nothing for 
Balak, except as he could use him ; but neither did 
he care anything for the Lord, except as he hoped 
to use him. So now he enters again into negotia- 
tions with the enemy, and advises Balak to do by 
strategy what he could not do by direct assault. 
He counsels Balak to use the fascinations of the 
daughters of Moab to entice the Israelites into 
idolatry. Thus, by degrading the people of Israel 
and leading them into sin, he would snatch them 



164 THE GEEAT SII^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

from God's protection. God will not curse the 
good : therefore make them wicked, and cause them 
to bring the curse on their own heads. Frederick 
W. Robertson has well said that a more diabolical 
wickedness can scarcely be conceived. Yet Ba- 
laam, as the world goes, was an honorable and 
veracious man; naj, a man of delicate conscien- 
tiousness and unconquerable scruples — a man of 
lofty religious professions, highly respectable and 
respected. 

There are men who would not play false and 
yet would wrongly win. There are men who would 
not lie and yet who would bribe a poor man to sup- 
port a cause which he believes in his soul to be 
false. There are men who would resent at the 
sword^s point the charge of dishonor, who would 
yet for selfish gratification entice the weak into 
sin and damn body and soul in hell. There are 
men who w^ould be shocked at being called traitors, 
yet who in time of war will make a fortune by sell- 
ing arms and ammunition and provisions to their 
country's foes. There are men, respectable and re- 
si)ected, who give liberally and support religious 
societies and sit in fashionable church pews, who 
would not swear nor do any outward, open sin, who 
make their wealth by crushing the lifeblood out of 
white slaves in stenchf ul sweat shops, or by renting 



FATE OF MR. FACING-BOTH-WAYS 165 

their property for liquor saloons and gambling 
hells and brothels. We are all ready to curse 
Balaam, and he deserves it; but let us not forget 
that Balaam did not do one whit worse than these 
men, and if God damned him for doing what he 
did, hell yawns for the men who to-day are trapping 
the unwary that they may fatten their own greed. 
We may see illustrated here the tremendous im- 
portance of the current in which a man places him- 
self. There is a current in every community that 
sweeps heavenward. If a man puts himself into 
that current and deliberately sets out to serve God, 
to make his friends among Christian people, and to 
turn from everything that would be displeasing 
to God, the current of his life will gain momentum 
every day, and will help to sweep him onward to- 
ward the heavenly shore. On the other hand, there 
is a current in every community that plunges 
downward toward the bottomless pit ; and if a man 
thrusts himself into that current, he is borne re- 
morselessly on. We become like the people with 
whom we associate, and our thoughts and ideals, 
whether good or evil, have power to infuse their 
own quality into the very blood and fiber of our 
being. If you have ever read 8ilas Marner you 
will remember the typical miser who is described 
in that book. The miser had been a very dutiful 



166 THE GREAT SINI^ERS OF THE BIBLE 

man at church, and was wronged by a brother, and 
fled from the town and the church and buried him- 
self in the country. He was a poor man — a 
weaver; and he wove and hoarded his gold, and 
used to go to the little spot where he had hoarded 
it and turn it with his hands and feel how rich he 
was. But one night there came a strange, sad cry, 
and he went out to see whence it came ; and when 
he returned the gold had gone, and in its place he 
saw a little child. It was a most unwelcome ex- 
change ; but when he turned to the little child and 
caressed it, and it caressed him, and he fed it and 
grew to love it, the heart of the man was human- 
ized, and his character was ennobled and exalted. 
The more he had loved the money, the more hateful 
he became ; the more he loved the child, the lovelier 
he grew. Man is made by his loves. If we love 
mean and vulgar things we shall grow to be like 
them. But if we love pure, noble, holy things we 
shall grow to be as noble as they. 

Balaam had no thought that he would finally 
cast in his lot with Balak and the enemies of God ; 
but by his double-heartedness, his facing one way 
and then the other in order if possible to gain both 
the wages of righteousness and the bribe of un- 
righteousness, he thrust himself into this wicked 
current that finally forced him into the position of 



FATE OF ME. FACIN'G-BOTH-WAYS 167 

an open foe of God's people. Kobert Louis Steven- 
son's book that won him bis first great fame, and 
which has been so often discussed, with its story 
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, won because we all 
have in our own consciousness something which 
bears witness to the possibility of our being 
tempted to a like career. The result is always the 
same when the temptation is yielded to. The bad 
side of a man's nature will always win where a 
man gives himself up to live a life which faces both 
ways. The wicked other half may be kept in the 
background for a time, but in the end it will come 
to be the personality, and the good will be crushed 
out entirely. 

There are many people like Balaam in our 
modern world. They have a poetic side to their 
nature. They have vision hours when goodness 
seems indescribably beautiful and a holy life 
greatly attracts them. They have fine sensibili- 
ties ; they are wrought upon by a tale of woe, and 
if you talk to them of the unspeakable horrors of 
Turkish persecutions in Armenia, the sufferings of 
starving Cubans, or if their favorite novelist paints 
a touching picture of some fair life betrayed and 
debauched, they will be moved to tears and will 
have an hour of charitable feeling. The vulgar, 
loathsome, repulsive side of common sins is hate- 



168 THE GREAT SIN^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

f ul to them. But they do not hate sin because it is 
a wrong against G od ; it is only because it offends 
their taste. And with all their poetic sentiment 
and generous impulses and occasional tearful feel- 
ing, they do not really love humanity, and their 
lives go on like Balaam's — seeking their own self- 
ish interests, without real worship to God or love 
for mankind, until the drifting current of selfish- 
ness carries them to the camp of those "having no 
hope and without God in the world." 

I appeal to you for an open, outspoken attitude 
in behalf of Christ and a righteous life. It is the 
only right course, and it is the only safe course. 
I look into many of your faces to-night knowing 
that the one thing that you need, above everything 
else, is a complete cleansing of your hearts from 
sin ; a radical transformation of your life, so that 
you will stand a uniformed soldier of Jesus Christ. 
You need not to be made better, but, by God's for- 
giving mercy, to be made thoroughly good. 

A physician was giving earnest attention to a 
sick child, and encouraged the anxious mother to 
hope for her recovery. The mother said to the 
child one day, "The doctor says he thinks he will 
soon make mamma's little girl better." 

"But why will he not make me well ?" asked the 
child with eagerness. 



TATE OF MR. FACING-BOTH-WAYS 169 

Jesus Christ is able to cure us of sin. And it is 
not to be better only, but to be well, that we should 
pray. 

I repeat it : This, above everything else, is your 
greatest want. Hugh Price Hughes relates an 
incident of a disting-uished minister who was sud- 
denly invited to visit a dying man. He found him 
with little furniture, no food, and no attendant, 
in the agonies of death. He was dying in the 
greatest destitution. "O sir," said he to the min- 
ister, ^^I am in great want.'^ And the minister 
made the mistake we too often make, and thought 
he was referring to some temporal wants. He 
said, "Yes, I see you are in this wretched place, 
with no food, no medicine, no attendant. I will 
go and get a doctor and a nurse, and some food and 
nourishment." "O," he said, lifting his thin hand, 
"that is not what I want. What I want," he said, 
in the deep voice of the dying, "is to know that my 
sins are forgiven." When a man comes to die, he 
wants to know that God has forgiven him, that 
Christ has saved him. But if the dying need it, 
we need it just as certainly. 

A great many make the same tragic mistake that 
Balaam made. Balaam longed to die the death of 
the righteous. There is scarcely a passage in the 
Bible more often quoted than Balaam's expression 



170 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

of desire, "Let me die the death of the righteous, 
and let my last end be like his!" That is very 
beautiful, and I have no doubt that for once 
Balaam was sincere. But he was not willing to 
pay the price. Everything has its cost. The cost 
of dying right is living right. To die the death of 
the righteous a man must pay the price of living 
the life of the righteous. Some of you who are not 
Christians are like Balaam in that you desire, and 
in some way expect, to die the death of a Christian. 
You read the story of triumphant Christian death- 
beds, or you have stood by the side of the couch 
when your father or mother or some dear Christian 
friend met death with a smile and with the glow of 
heaven's joy on the face, and you have said to your- 
self, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and 
let my last end be like his!" But you are not 
living for it. Jesus says, "Whosoever shall deny 
me before men, him will I also deny before my 
Father." And yet you go on denying him — ^re- 
fusing to open the door of your heart at his knock- 
ing, refusing to stand on his side in the fellowship 
of the church, refusing to renounce your sins and 
bow before him in penitence, seeking his forgive- 
ness. How can you expect that you will die the 
death of the Christian, and have a Christian's wel- 
come into heaven, while you are going on living a 



PATE OF MR. FACING-BOTH-WAYS 171 

life of selfishness and sin^ and neglecting to accept 
Christ as your Saviour? Let Balaam, broken- 
hearted and ruined, dying a traitor on the battle- 
field in disgrace and shame, bring you to-night his 
message of warning. He tried to live the life you 
are living, and you see the end. "God is not 
mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
also reap." Balaam found it so, and every sinner 
against God from that day to this has found it true. 
The laws of the universe will not be reversed on 
your account. Balaam had his chance for repent- 
ance and refused it, and lost his soul. He sinned 
against great light and died in great darkness. 
You have great light. Christ speaks to you with 
many voices. Do not sin against him! Do not 
grieve the Holy Spirit ! Choose now an open and 
honorable career as the friend and servant of Jesus 
Christ. 



172 THE GREAT SINNEKS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEE XIV 

The Flight and Escape of a Sinister 

Be sure your sin will find you out.— Numbers xxxii, 23. 

Ttiere shall be six cities for refuge, which ye shall ap- 
point for the manslayer, that he may flee thither.— IV^wm- 
bers XXXV, 6. 

Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out— John 
vi, 37. 

There is a Scripture declaration that "The 
wicked flee when no man pursueth." That is be- 
cause there is an invisible pursuer which makes 
a coward of the man who is conscious that his sins 
pursue him and that he has no way within himself 
of making defense against their attack. That is 
the reason that many men who have been reckless 
in going into sin become so timid that '^the sound 
of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall 
flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall 
when none pursueth." This constant threat of 
pursuit and punishment robs the soul of peace, and 
though it may be forgotten for a time, the sinner 
has no assurance when the pursuer will rise up to 
denounce him. Byron wrote out a bitter experi- 
ence: 



THE FLIGHT SOT! ESCAPE 6t A SINNER ITS 

"That pang where more than madness lies! 
The worm that will not sleep, and never dies, 
Thought of the gloomy day and ghastly night, 
That dreads the darlsness, and yet loathes the light; 
That winds around and tears the quivering heart, 
Ah! Wherefore not consume it and depart?" 

Bjron was not the only man who has been thus 
haunted. We talk about haunted houses and laugh 
at the superstition, but a haunted soul is no super- 
stition ; it is a dread everyday reality wherever sin 
hangs unforgiven above a sinner's head. Heraud 
writes : 

"Will no remorse, will no decay, 

O Memory, soothe thee into peace? 
When life is ebbing fast away 

Will not thy hungry vultures cease? 
Ah, no! As weeds from fading free, 
Noxious and rank, yet verdantly, 

Twine round a ruined tower, 
So to the heart, untamed, will cling 
The memory of an evil thing 

In life's departing hour; 
Green is the weed when gray the wall. 
And thistles rise while turrets fall. 

"Yet open Memory's book again; 

Turn o'er the lovelier pages now, 
And find that balm for present pain 

Which past enjoyment can bestow; 
Delusion all, and void of power! 
For e'en in thought's serenest hour, 
12 



174 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

When past delights are felt 
And Memory shines on scenes of woe, 
'Tis like the moonbeam on the snow. 

That gilds, but cannot melt; 
That throws a mocking luster o'er, 
But leaves it cheerless as before.'* 

If men would only believe God's word about the 
certainty of sin pursuing the sinner and spoiling 
all the sweet gladness of innocence, they would re- 
sist temptation and keep their freedom. The devil 
deceives us with the feeling that sin is only danger- 
ous when discovered ; while the real danger in sin 
is not in its discovery, but in the hurt which it does 
to our own moral natures. And no outward evi- 
dence is required to secure our conviction at the 
judgment seat ; the certain witness to our sin is in 
our own conscience. Shakespeare, in "Kichard 
III," makes false Clarence say : 

"My dream was lengthened after life; 

then began the tempest to my soul! 

1 passed, methought, the melancholy flood, 
With that grim ferryman which poets write of. 
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. 

The first that there did greet my stranger soul 
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick, 
Who cried aloud— What scourge for perjury 
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence? 
And so he vanished. Then came wandering by 
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair 



THE FLIGHT AND ESCAPE OF A SINNEE 175 

Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked out aloud, 
Clarence is come— false, fleeting, perjured Clarence— 
That stabVd me in tJie field at Tewkesbury; 
Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments! 
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends 
Environed me, and howled in mine ears 
Such hideous cries that, with the very noise, 
I trembling waked, and for a season after 
Could not believe but that I was in hell; 
Such terrible impression made my dream. 
***** 

I have done these things 
That now give evidence against my soul." 

And that there is no lack of witnesses is clearly 
set forth farther along in Shakespeare's heart- 
searching tale : 

"My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree; 
Murder, stern murder, in the dir'st degree; 
All several sins, all used in each degree. 
Thronged to the bar, crying all— Guilty! Guilty! 
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, 
And, if I die, no soul shall pity me. 
Nay, wherefore should they? Since that I myself 
Find in myself no pity to myself." 

And these strong lines of the great poet are in 
perfect harmony with Scripture truth and with 



176 THE GREAT SINl^ERS OF THE BIBLE 

the testimony of human history and of our own 
consciences. 

Happy, then, is the thought of a refuge from 
the pursuer of our souls. We have a glimpse, in 
the second verse of the text, of that mercy and love 
of God which ever seek to save the sinner. Under 
this old Hebrew arrangement certain cities were 
set apart as cities of refuge, to which, if one had 
slain another by accident or without malicious in- 
tent, he could flee, and be safe from the manslayer, 
or avenger. 1 have called your attention to it be- 
cause of its suggestion of the great refuge which 
God has provided for the sinner in Jesus Christ, 
our Saviour. The roads to the cities of refuge were 
required to be kept open and were laid out straight, 
and the gates were always open, so that nothing 
could stand in the way of the escape of a man who 
was reallv in earnest. So Christ is accessible to 
every sinner who will take the straight road of 
obedience and enter through the open gate of re- 
pentance and confession of sin. The personal 
flight of the manslayer was necessary for his es- 
cape. N'o one could do it for him, and no amount 
of thinking about it, or good impulses or desires in 
that direction, could save him from death at the 
hands of the avenger. So it is true that no amount 
of good intention can be of any value to a sinner 



THE FLIGHT AND ESCAPE OF A SINNER 1Y7 

unless the good intentions are put into action and 
cause a real arousing of the man or woman to flee 
to Christ and enter in to him as their Saviour and 
Kefuge. 

Perhaps someone says, "I would like to be a 
Christian. I am ashamed and sorry on account 
of mj sins, and the thought of them robs me of 
peace ; but I know not how to begin to find refuge." 
If you will just put aside all thoughts of mystery, 
and ask God for forgiveness in Christ's name as 
simply as a little child would ask to be forgiven by 
his mother, your perplexity and trouble will be at 
an end. I have been reading an incident related 
by Dr. James Todd. One wintry night Dr. Todd 
got on the train in Chicago to return to his home 
in Michigan. He had shaken the sleet from his 
ulster, thrown it over the back of the seat, and sat 
down beside it, when a voice called in a trembling 
tone, "Hello, doctor !" 

He immediately sat upright, and, looking for- 
ward to see who saluted him, recognized the famil- 
iar faces of two of his parishioners. He hastened 
to meet them, and soon learned of the serious ill- 
ness of the man who at home was familiarly known 
as "Rob." He had been with his wife to consult 
a specialist in Chicago. 

"I am very weak, doctor," he said, "but am 



178 THE GREAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

gaein' home for a little and will bide there tae vote 
for McKinley, and then I'll come back and see the 
specialist, for he has helped me." 

The man was a Scotchman who had been raised 
in a Christian home in the old country, but had 
been for many years religiously indifferent. 

Once he had admitted to Dr. Todd, "I am gey 
fond o' a dram ; religion is not what it once seemed 
tae be; I dinna like these ministers who rant in 
sermons, an' tell stories tae frighten the bairns, 
but like tae hear you preach once in a while be- 
cause you are Scotch — and for the days o' auld 
lang syne." 

In the morning, when they reached their desti- 
nation, as Dr. Todd said good-bye he added, "I am 
coming to see you, Robert, as a man and a friend, 
but not as the minister." 

"Well," he replied, "I'll be glad to see you. 
Guid morning." 

A few days afterward the minister fulfilled his 
promise and found the sick man resting on a 
lounge. His cough had grown worse, and a sickly 
pallor hovered around his naturally ruddy cheeks. 

They talked for a while about Scotland, but no 
reference was made to religion. Finally the sick 
man laughed till he coughed, as he said, "I told 
the neebors ye were comin' tae prepare me fur 



THE FLIGHT AND ESCAPE OF A SINNEK 179 

burial ; but I said, 'I'm gain' tae cheat him, minis- 
ter though he be.' " 

On the minister's next visit he found the patient 
still weaker, the hacking cough more troublesome, 
and his manner less pleasant. 

''How are you to-day, Robert ?" 

"I am not very weel, but the doctor has just left. 
I have been won'rin' hoo it is sick folks in this toon 
dinna like the minister tae see them — an' pay the 
doctors for comin' who fairly tire them. !N^a doot 
it is the mule in man that accounts for it." 

After a pause Dr. Todd asked, "Robert, would 
you like me to read you a Scotch story? I've 
brought it along with me, believing it would inter- 
est you. It's a good one, but if it wearies you just 
tell me, and I will stop reading." 

His eyes suddenly brightened, and his hungering 
nature spoke : "Read on. I'll be glad to hear it." 

Dr. Todd took from his pocket a copy of Beside 
the Bonnie Brier Bush, and read from "The 
Doctor's Last Journey." As he read of the doctor's 
longing for Drumsheugh, and their friendship for 
each other, the sick man said in softened accents, 
"That's true for Scotchmen." 

As the minister proceeded to read of the strug- 
gles of the doctor and Jess, Robert's eyes were 
moistened with tears. When he listened to the 



180 THE GREAT SIITNERS OF THE BIBLE 

doctor's confession to his friend, he whispered 
huskily to himself, "That's me, that's me." 

When the storj was finished it was easy to see 
that the citadel of his heart had surrendered, and 
that in the inner chambers of his sonl he was weep- 
ing like a sorrowing child. The minister wisely 
pressed his hand and slipped gently and quietly out 
of the room, leaving him to come to himself, with 
his past hanging threateningly over him, the un- 
certain future demanding recognition, and his soul 
hemmed in between. 

!N'ext day Dr. Todd visited him again and asked, 
"How did you like the story ?" 

"Ah, it was grand ! Will ye read tae me again ?" 

The doctor opened the book again and read Mc- 
Clure's confession. As he finished it the sick man 
interrupted his further reading by an earnest con- 
fession of his own : "I have na gotten over that a' 
night. Doctor, I am waur than he. For I did not 
regard God, and I turned my back on the kirk of 
our fathers and my past early training. I some- 
times cursed a wise Providence, and defied him. 
When I gaed to the church it was often tae boast 
hoo I knew a guid sermon, or to find fault wi' a 
poor one. My family has had a bad example frae 
me. I have been untrue tae my trust, an' unfaith- 
ful tae my God. I am kent this day as ^Keprobate 



THE FLIGHT AIS^D ESCAPE OF A SINNEE 181 

Eob.' I hae laughed even at deith, and it's hard 
for me tae seek pardon ; and mj sins, I remember 
them this da v." 

He turned wearily on the lounge and tried to 
hide his face, which reflected the inward struggle 
between hope and despair. 

"But can ye not do as the old doctor did ? He, 
too, was very sorry, but he trusted God would have 
mercy on him." 

"Cud ye pray for me, doctor, an' I'll try ?" 

They prayed together that the entrance of the 
Lord's word might bring light to the one groping 
in the darkness, that the sick one might have the 
quiet and consolation of Christ's peace, and the 
wandering sheep be restored to the fold. 

"That's better ; I see it clearer noo, an' I hope in 
his mercy. Come again the morn'." 

Some weeks passed before the death angel came, 
and sweet was the fellowship those two Christian 
Scotchmen enjoyed together. The sick man's trust 
was childlike in its simplicity, but it was both clear 
and strong. His disposition was as completely 
changed as the mist-covered mountain is by the 
rising sun. He was cheerfully patient during the 
remainder of his trying illness, though he had for- 
merly been a sour and irritable man. During 
Dr. Todd's visits afterward he was most anx- 



182 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

ious that nothing should interfere with "cor wor- 
ship/' as he termed their devotions together, 
though, Scotchman like, he was most conservative 
as to verbal experiences. 

One day, shortly before his death, the minister 
asked him, '^'Robert, would you not like to give 
some further expression concerning your changing 
conditions ?" 

His only reply to this was to repeat tremblingly, 
but with great feeling, the oft-quoted psalm which 
is, beyond all others, peculiarly the Scotchman's 
psalm: ^The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not 
want. He maketh me to lie down in green pas- 
tures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He 
restoreth my soul : he leadeth me in the paths of 
righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I 
walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod 
and thy staif they comfort me. Thou preparest a 
table before me in the presence of mine enemies : 
thou anointest my head with oil ; my cup runneth 
over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me 
all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the 
house of the Lord forever." 

Knowing his past life, the minister felt a little 
surprised at this accuracy in the recital of the 
psalm, and asked : 



THE FLIGHT AI^D ESCAPE OF A SINNER 183 

"Kobert, where did jou learn that ?" 
"In the Sabbath school in Lead Hills, when I 
was sax years anld. And since ye read tae me 
aboot Dr. McClnre and showed me I was wrang, 
and the Lord's mercy, it has a' come back tae me. 
An' the things I learned frae my mither and my 
teachers at the schule when a laddie are my com- 
fort to-day. An', doctor, some day after I hae 
gane hame tae them, dinna say I died a saint, but, 
if ye think it'll dae any gnid, ye might tell hoo Dr. 
McClure helped to save a soul." 

I have told you this homely, sweet story with 
the hope that it might show some of you how nat- 
ural and easy it is to turn to God, with the sim- 
plicity of a little child turning to father or mother, 
and find forgiveness. 



184: THE GREAT SII^NEBS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEK XV 

The Evolution of a Sii^ner 

When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish gar- 
ment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of 
gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and 
took them; and behold, they are hid in the earth in the 
midst of my tent, and the silver under it— Joshua vii, 21. 

The army of Israel had turned cowardly in 
battle, and their hearts melted like water in the 
face of the enemy. i^Tever was there a braver 
officer on a battlefield than Joshua. He was every 
inch a soldier, from the sole of his foot to the crown 
of his head. He was heart-broken and in despair 
at the sudden cowardice of his soldiers. But when 
he went to God in prayer about it he soon found 
out where the trouble was. Some of his people had 
become greedy and had disobeyed the command- 
ment, which had been very strict, that they were 
not to wage a war for plunder, and that none of 
the treasures of the enemy were to be seized upon 
for private gain. So it came about that God re- 
vealed to Joshua the secret of the cowardice of 
Israel. 



THE EVOLUTION OF A SINNEE 185 

!N'othing will make a people cowardly quicker 
than to be given over to greed. "When Christ went 
into the country of the Gadarenes and found the 
man there who was possessed of a legion of devils, 
and, driving them out of the man, permitted them 
to go into the herd of swine, after which they 
drowned themselves in the sea, the hog raisers of 
that town immediately got up a procession to come 
out and petition Jesus to leave the country. They 
could not deny that he cast out devils, but the dan- 
ger to the pork business made them cowardly. So, 
in one of these modern cities, if a Christian minis- 
ter or a Christian church begins to agitate public 
opinion and arouse Christian sentiment to enforce 
law against the liquor sellers or drive them out of 
the community, every man who rents his property 
for saloons, or gets advertising for his newspaper 
from the liquor traffic, or is in any way interested 
in it through his pocket-book, will begin to stir up 
a procession to persuade the radical representative 
of Christ to depart out of the town. Let a minister 
or a church attack gambling and seek to protect the 
young and unwary from the traps of the gam- 
blers, and it will not only be the thugs and pro- 
fessional gamblers who will cry out against him or 
them, but you will be astonished to see the respect- 
able, high-toned proprietors of race tracks and pool 



186 THE GREAT SINNERS OP THE BIBLE 

rooms who will be arrayed against every earnest 
defender of the people from the gambler. The 
cowardly nerve of the people is ever the financial 
nerve. Let a man have his greed aroused, and, 
though liberty and humanity and righteousness 
may bleed and die, the greedy sinner can only 
gorge himself on the plunder where his heart is set. 

But it is to the orderly evolution by which a sin- 
ner comes to his ruin that I wish to call special 
attention. Notice how logically this man Achan, 
for that was his name, sets forth the pivotal points 
in his downward career. First he says, "I saw ;" 
next, "I coveted ;" and then, "I took." ^N'aturally, 
after having obtained it, and knowing that he 
had risked his life in breaking the law, the next 
step is, "I hid." And then he was discovered, and 
the end came in his punishment by a horrible 
death. Go over it again: saw, coveted, took, hid, 
discovered, punished. There you have it, and it 
is the story of sin over and over again all along 
down the history of the race. 

Eve "saw" "the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil," and she "saw" that the fruit of it was 
pleasant to look upon, and she brooded over it, and 
talked with the devil about it, and then took it 
and ate of it and gave to Adam — and then what 
happened ? They felt the dawn of guilt in their 



The EvoLtJTioir or a sinner 187 

consciences. Thej were ashamed of their naked- 
ness. Thej tried to make aprons out of fig leaves. 
They hid away in the shadows of the garden, but 
that did not silence the voice of God as he cried, 
"Where art thou?" And they went out from 
Eden with the flaming sword waving behind 
them. 

Cain "saw" the prosperity of Abel; he "saw" 
God^s pleasure in it and appreciation of his 
brother's goodness, and he envied his brother. He 
wanted his brother's blessing without paying the 
price in goodness. He brooded about it. The 
more he thought it over, the more he hated Abel. 
Then he went and tried to pick a quarrel with him, 
and, when Abel would not quarrel, the very sweet- 
ness and innocence of his brother's face seemed to 
stab him like a dagger. Then he killed him, and 
became a vagabond on the face of the earth. 

Joseph's brethren listened to the prattle of the 
young lad about his dreams of the sheaves that 
bowed down to him, and the stars that made obei- 
sance, and were filled with envy and jealousy. 
They brooded over it, until one day they "saw" 
that coat of many colors glistening in the sun as 
he came over the hills with his father's message. 
They seized upon him and sold him into slavery. 
They lied to the old father. They covered up their 



188 THE GREAT smNEBS OI^ THE BlBLE 

sin by an oath of secrecy. They kept it covered 
for twenty years, but in the counting room of 
Pharaoh in Egypt, when famine had driven them 
into a strange land, the ghost of the wronged boy 
came back and stared them in the face, and they 
cried, with anguish, "We are verily guilty concern- 
ing our brother !'' 

Ahab "saw" [N^aboth's vineyard and wanted to 
buy it ; and when it was not for sale he still coveted 
it, and brooded over it until he winked at Jezebel's 
wicked murder of its owner. Then he entered into 
possession and was happy for a time ; but justice 
did not sleep, the E"emesis was on his track, and at 
the very spot where Naboth was slain the arrow 
found its way into Ahab's body, and the dogs licked 
up the blood that oozed out of his war chariot. 

Samson "saw" Delilah and was fascinated by 
her brilliancy and beauty and dash of spirit, and 
was lured into sin. Again and again, in con- 
temptuous strength, he escaped out of the meshes 
that were laid for him ; but the day came when his 
strength vanished, though at the time he knew it 
not. His eyes were put out ; the great arms, that 
could rend a young lion as though it were a kid, 
were chained to grind at the mill like some poor 
donkey ; and he who had been the hope and prom- 
ise of a great people, their glory and their pride, 



THE EVOLUTION" OF A SINNER 189 

became the slave and the laughingstock of his 
enemies. 

You see there is a great law running through all 
human history, and our text is only in harmony 
with that law. Sin in you, if unchecked, unre- 
pented of, unforgiven, will run the same sure and 
deadly career, and end in destruction. 

Let us take it up for a moment, point by point. 
"I saw." But you say, ^'How could he help it ?" 
Often a man can help it. I have no doubt that 
many soldiers that day were so desperately in 
earnest to win victory that they took no note of 
silver or gold or fine garments. A man is likely 
to see what he is looking for. Two men walk down 
the street, and one sees books and pictures and 
elevating things. They attract his attention and 
win his interest. The other man sees a saloon sign 
and snu-ffs the fumes of liquor through the door, 
or he sees something that awakens evil passion or 
feeds an impure thought already in his mind. And 
yet I do not wish to be understood as teaching that 
the temptation is always our own fault. Every one 
of us will be tempted. The disciple is not greater 
than his Lord, and he was cruelly tempted. The 
great point is how we shall treat the temptation. 
The fatal blunder Achan made was in permitting 
himself to remain gazing at those forbidden treas- 

Id 



190 THE GREAT SIN]S'EES OF THE BIBLE 

ures, tliiis giving his covetousness a chance to grow 
and fatten until it overcame his will. The breed- 
ing place of sin is in the imagination, l^o man 
will ever commit a sin unless he first allows it to 
nest in his heart. People meditate on sins which 
fascinate them by their appearance. A man be- 
holds with eye or thought what he knows to be 
wrong, to be a sin against God, contrary to the 
divine law, and yet it charms him. He says to 
himself, "If it were only right for me to do it, how 
great would be the joy." And then, instead of 
thrusting it out of his mind, he continues to think 
about it; he turns it over and over again, like a 
sweet morsel, in his imagination. He pictures 
himself committing the sin, and every time he does 
so he is the more fascinated by it. As he thinks 
about it the promised pleasures of the sin become 
more and more attractive, while the ugly, repul- 
sive side is lost to view. And thus days may go on, 
possibly weeks and months, until an opportunity 
comes for the sin to be committed ; and then, sud- 
denly as a panther which has been crouching over 
a traveler's path, waiting hungrily through all the 
hours of the afternoon until he shall come back at 
night from his toil, leaps like a flash of lightning 
on his victim, so sin which a man has been getting 
ready to do, by weeks and months of thought and 



THE EVOLUTIOIT OF A SINNEE 191 

meditation, suddenly becomes a horrible and soul- 
blighting reality. 

The moment the sin is committed there is born 
in the wicked conscience a desire to hide it, to cover 
it up and conceal it from view — ^not only from the 
view of the world, but from the view of the soul 
itself and from the view of God. But this is im- 
possible. There are a great many things that a 
man has not reckoned with when he commits a sin. 
He has done violence to his own will. He has un- 
leashed a violent passion or appetite. He has been 
conquered once, and this enemy of his soul has 
gained the prestige of victory and is now domineer- 
ing and insolent toward him. Conscience wounded 
will ever and anon rise up to rebuke him, and God 
is never deluded for a moment. 

It is said that General Kitchener, the hero of 
Omdurman, knows the Oriental languages almost 
perfectly. At one of his army camps on the Kile 
two Arab date-sellers were arrested as suspected 
spies, and were confined in the guard tent. Shortly 
afterward a third Arab prisoner was hastily bun- 
dled into the tent. An animated jabbering ensued 
between the three, and in a few minutes, much to 
the astonishment of the sentry, the latest arrival 
drew aside the doorway and stepped out, remark- 
ing, "All right, sentry ; I am going to the general." 



192 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

It was Kitchener. Again only a few minutes 
passed when an orderly hurried up and a spade 
was handed to each of the two Arabs, who were 
then marched outside the lines, made to dig their 
own graves, and were then shot. They were very 
dangerous spies and Kitchener had detected them. 

So there is a traitor bundled into our own tent. 
Our own conscience will bear swift testimony 
against us if we sin against God. 

But some of you are conscious of your sin and 
are sorry for it. Achan found no place for re- 
pentance. He died a shameful and disgraceful 
death. That is the natural outcome of sin. If 
unforgiven it always ends in that. "The wages 
of sin is death." "A man is tempted when he is 
drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then 
when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin : and 
sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." 
That is the natural logic of a sinful course. How 
many there are that go on to that fearful end. But, 
thank God, it need not be so with you ! You may 
this very hour repent of your sins and turn from 
them to Christ, who is able and willing to forgive 
them, and give you a glad and joyous consciousness 
that your sins are blotted out and will be remem- 
bered against you no more forever. 

Mr. Moody tells the story of a man in one of his 



THE EVOLUTION OF A SIKNER 193 

meetings who had been brought there against his 
will, through some personal influence. When he 
got there the j were singing : 

" Come! oh, come to Me! 
Weary, heavy-laden, 
Come! oh, come to Me! '* 

He said afterward he thought he never saw so 
many fools together in his life before. The idea of 
a number of men standing there singing, "Come ! 
come ! come !" When he started home he could not 
get this little word out of his head ; it kept coming 
back all the time. He went into a saloon and 
ordered some whisky, thinking to drown it. But 
it kept coming back. He drank more whisky ; but 
the words kept ringing in his ears. He said to 
himself, "What a fool I am for allowing myself to 
be troubled in this way !" He had another glass, 
and finally got home. He went off to bed, but 
could not sleep ; it seemed as if the very pillow kept 
whispering, "Come ! come !" "What a fool I was 
for ever going to that meeting at all !" he muttered. 
When he got up he took the little hymn book, found 
the hymn, and read it over. "What nonsense !" he 
said to himself ; "the idea of a rational man being 
disturbed by that hymn." He set fire to the hymn 
book, but could not burn up the little word 



194: THE GREAT SINITERS OF THE BIBLE 

"Come!" He declared he would never go to an- 
other meeting ; but the next night he came again. 
Strange to say, they were singing the same hymn. 
"There is that miserable old hymn again," he com- 
plained. "What a fool I am for coming." Some 
time afterward that man arose in a meeting of 
young converts and told this story. Pulling out 
the little hymn book — for he had bought another 
copy — and opening it at this hymn, he said: "I 
think this hymn is the sweetest and best in the 
English language. God blessed it to the saving 
of my soul." 

Christ is still calling. Come t^ him and be 
saved ! 



CArTAII^^S FOOT ON THE NECK OF A KING 195 



CHAPTEE XVI 

A Captain with His Foot on the ITeck of 
A King 

Put your feet upon the necks of these kings.— Jos^wa 
X, 24. 

The five mountain kings, the king of Jerusalem, 
the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king 
of Lachish, and the king of Eglon, had all gathered 
their armies together to fight against the men of 
Gibeon, in the new territory which had been allotted 
to them in the land of Canaan. They were threat- 
ened with destruction by this powerful coalition, 
and sent a most urgent appeal to Joshua to come to 
their relief. He did so at once, and with his ac- 
customed valor and dash brought about a great 
victory that scattered the enemy in confusion. In 
the midst of their overwhelming defeat the -^ve 
mountain kings of the Amorites, in order to save 
themselves from destruction, hid themselves in a 
cave at Makkedah. Joshua would not stop for 
.them at the time, but ordered some of the soldiers 
to roll great stones into the mouth of the cave, as 
though they were penning up a wolf Vun to eartfi, 



196 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

and so he let them wait "until the battle was over. 
When the victory was won, and the army had come 
back to Makkedah, he ordered the cave to be opened 
and the five kings to be brought out before him. 
The scene that was then enacted is one of the most 
dramatic in all history. Picture it for yourself. 
About are the victorious hosts, fresh from battle. 
Dragged out from the cave are the proud but hu- 
miliated and broken kings of the Amorites. They 
are led out before Joshua, and compelled to lie 
down upon the ground. Then Joshua called on 
all the captains which went with him to the battle 
and commanded them, saying, ^^Come near, put 
your feet upon the necks of these kings. And they 
came near, and put their feet upon the necks of 
them. And Joshua said unto them, Fear not, nor 
be dismayed; be strong and of good courage: for 
thus shall the Lord do to all your enemies against 
whom ye fight." Afterward the kings were hanged 
on five trees, and their bodies were cast into the 
cave where they had hid themselves, and great 
stones were rolled back again to the cave's mouth. 
Thus in selecting their hiding-place they had se- 
lected their tomb as well. 

Joshua has already spiritualized this picture for 
us. We cannot do better than follow his example. 
There are other kings that make war on the sons 



captain's foot on the neck of a king 197 

of God, that ought to be treated in the same way 
that Joshua treated these. There are wicked 
habits, there are giant sins, the measure of whose 
power is so great that they may be well compared 
to kings. If we are to build up a good character, 
and live in purity and peace, we must fight these 
kings of evil to the death. We shall never be safe 
until we have trampled them underfoot. The 
great trouble is that men parley with their sins 
when they ought to kill them. No Spanish diplo- 
mat was ever so dilatory or so wily in securing 
advantages through parley as are the giant sins 
that plead in our hearts to retain some sort of 
standing with us. 

I never shall forget an experience I had last 
Thanksgiving morning. I came to the church very 
early, but early as I was I found waiting for me a 
young man who asked me at the door if I had 
such a thing as a temperance pledge that he could 
sign. I told him I could soon write one, and took 
him into my study. He was a young man of large 
and splendid physique, well dressed, used excellent 
language, had a frank, open countenance, and gave 
every outward proof of being far above the aver- 
age in ability and manliness. Yet he told me his 
story with sobs and tears. He had given way to 
strong drinkr He had a good position as a travel- 



198 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

ing man for a commercial house, whicli he fearea 
he would lose through drunkenness. He had gone 
out to a neighboring town a few days before, and 
though he had not drank for months until that day, 
he was persuaded to take a single glass of beer, and 
from that on had been drunk for a week and had 
not even sought to do business. He was the only 
son of a widowed mother that lived in a Western 
city. It would break her heart if he should be 
broken down and destroyed. His cry was, "What 
can I do ?" "I have tried over and over again," 
said he, "quit for weeks and even months at a time, 
and then I am swept off of my feet like this in a 
moment, and all my good resolutions go down in 
debauch." 

I had another man come to me this week who has 
had a somewhat similar experience. He, too, is a 
big, strong, broad-shouldered, fine-looking man. 
He inherited a taste for strong drink. He was 
hedged away from it in his early youth, but in 
opening manhood fell into the hands of his ene- 
mies. Sorrow and misfortune came to him, and 
for a time he gave himself up to it and tried to 
drown his troubles. How many a man has tried to 
drown his troubles in strong drink, but has suc- 
ceeded only in drowning himself and taking his 
troubles, augmented ^ thousandfold, with him! 



captain's foot on the neck of a king 199 

After a while, however, conscience was aroused 
and he was awakened to make a fight against the 
enemy. He vowed to himself that he would stop 
his evil way and dethrone this tyrannical king. 
But right here he made his great blunder. He 
was urged at this time to come out openly for 
Christ; to confess his sins and to throw himself 
completely on the Lord's side as a soldier of Jesus 
Christ; but the devil whispered to him and said, 
"You had better wait a year or two, and see whether 
you are going to be able to keep these new resolu- 
tions which you have made. Many another man,'' 
said the tempter, "has made the same kind of 
promises to himself and fallen back in a few weeks 
to be worse than ever. If you join the church, let 
everybody know your determination, and then 
should get to drinking again, you would bring 
shame and disgrace not only on yourself, but on 
the church. Stay out until you are sure you can 
stand." !N'ow that sounds very plausible, and the 
devil has ruined thousands of men and women with 
that specious philosophy. 

Well, this young man I am telling you about, 
who came to see me this week, took the devil's ad- 
vice instead of the preacher's, and went on trying 
to fight his own battles. He succeeded in keeping 
gober for several months, but finally, in an ua- 



200 THE GEEAT SINjS^EES OF THE BIBLE 

guarded hour, he went down, and a two weeks' de- 
bauch followed. Shamed and humiliated, he came 
trembling back to himself, like the prodigal among 
the husks of the swineherd, and tried again. This 
time he only went about three months, and down 
again he went into the mire and filth, trodden 
under foot by his sin. Then he came to me with 
his tale of sorrow and despair. 

I said to both these men what I have said to 
thousands of men — not only in public congrega- 
tions, but singly, in heart-searching and sometimes 
heart-breaking conversations — that there was only 
one chance, and that was to cease parleying with 
the tyrant who had so shamed and disgraced them, 
and who held them in such cruel slavery; to 
trample him underfoot, hang him to the death, 
bury him out of sight, with the stones of God's 
promises piled against his tomb forever. If they 
follow that advice they will be saved men, and there 
is a future for them, bright and glorious, as the 
sons of God. If they reject it they will die in the 
gutter and go down to a drunkard's hell. 

But that is not the only king that tyrannizes over 
enslaved souls and makes war on men who ought to 
be living as the sons of God. Sin is rebellion 
against God ; it is refusal to keep God's law, refusal 
to give him loving service ; and whether it be ugly, 



captaiit's foot oit the neck of a KIiq^G 201 

loathsome, repulsive forms of sin, or clothed in 
fashionable garments made attractive and kingly 
as an angel of light, it is still the same hideous 
thing, and works the same horrid results on the 
human soul. The skull and the crossbones are ever 
the only true badge for sin ; for God's word is true, 
that "the wages of sin is death.'' 

The message which I wish to bring to you with 
all the power that I have is this : If you will fight 
against your sin, if you will make war against it 
— open, earnest, aggressive war; not war carried 
on in secret, but war that is avowed and declared 
to all the world, war waged with sharp sword to 
the very death — then you may be sure that you 
will soon run your enemy to the earth, and it will 
be hiding like these kings of the Amorites in the 
cave. 

If you are going to fight your sin it is never 
wise to dally with it. Wisdom lies in being up and 
at it. Barney Barnato, the Kafiir "diamond king," 
gave it as his opinion that he won his great finan- 
cial success because of his aggressiveness. He 
said : "If you are going to fight, always get in the 
first blow. If a man is going to hit you, hit him 
first, and say, ^If you try that I'll hit you again.' 
It is of no use for you to stand off and say, ^If you 
hit me I'll hit you back.' " What was policy in the 



202 THE GREAT SINIS^EES OP THE BIBLE 

diamond merchant is high wisdom on the part of 
the man who is going to make war on a wicked 
habit or a sinful appetite that threatens his moral 
safety. Don't quarrel or hold debate with it; 
stamp the neck underfoot and swing it to the first 
tree. Commit yourself openly before all the world 
as a man or woman at war with the devil. 

A lady, while giving the finishing touches to a 
table spread for a dinner party, heard the patter 
of naked feet upon the stairs. Surmising that her 
little daughter was probably bent on plundering 
the dessert, she hid herself behind the window cur- 
tains and watched the proceedings. The child, in 
her nightdress, came into the room, climbed up on 
a chair, helped herself deliberately to a fine peach, 
and went off with her booty. The mother felt 
very sad, and began to consider how she should 
punish her little girl. Presently she again heard 
the same patter of feet, and hid herself as before. 
The child clambered into the chair, replaced the 
fruit, triumphantly ejaculating, ^'That's one on 
you, Mr. Devil !'' and trotted off to bed in peace. 
She had experienced the truth of the apostle's 
declaration that if we resist the devil he will flee 
from us. 

What some of you need is to be roused up to 
make war on your sin. You are not now fighting 



CAPTAIiq^'s FOOT ON THE NECK OF A KING 203 

against it. O, I know what you would say : "I am 
ashamed of my sin; there are hours in which I 
loathe it and abominate it more than you can 
imagine j there are times when, if I could burn it 
out of my heart at the loss of a right arm or a right 
eye, I would not hesitate; and I have not really 
given up to it. I don't intend for a moment to die 
in my sins and give up to everlasting defeat." And 
yet while you feel that way about it, you are going 
on ever and anon yielding to sin, bearing its un- 
holy yoke, living with God's condemnation against 
sin hanging over your head, living so that if sud- 
den death should come you would be lost forever ; 
living so that if you were suddenly cut off in your 
sins they would banish you from the presence of 
God through all eternity; and yet, conscious of 
this, you do not rouse yourself to fight your sin, to 
trample it imderfoot and strangle it to death. 

When the men of Gibeon had to face these ^ve 
kings of the Amorites, they called for Joshua be- 
cause they knew he had wisdom and courage and 
strength and reinforcements enough to lead them 
to victory. A man who is fighting his sin must call 
on our Joshua, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the 
only one who can help you to put your foot on the 
neck of all the evil kings that make war on your 
soul. 



204 THE GEEAT SINISTERS OF THE BIBLE 

He is a leader who never gets discouraged. 
There never was a greater thing said about Christ 
than that which was foretold of him by the prophet, 
''He shall not fail nor be discouraged." And he 
never was discouraged. He came down to earth 
and tasted our grief and our sorrow, but no one 
ever found him once with "the blues." He saw 
mankind at its worst; he saw their hypocrisies, 
their ingratitude, their selfishness ; but he was not 
discouraged in them, and went on, ever seeing the 
vision of the day when all the devils should be over- 
thrown and destroyed. 'Not Peter's denial, not 
even Judas's treachery, could discourage Jesus 
Christ. Pilate could scourge him till from loss of 
blood he a little later fainted under his cross ; but 
he could not discourage him. l^ailed to the cross, 
he suffered, he thirsted, he prayed, and died, but he 
was not discouraged. On Easter morning the 
angel descended from heaven and rolled away the 
stone from the mouth of the sepulcher, the Roman 
guard fled in terror, and the undiscouraged Christ 
came forth for evermore the victor over death and 
the grave. O my dear friends, you who have 
fought single-handed against your evil passions, 
your sinful longing, your wicked habits, and have 
been defeated again and again until you have be- 
come discouraged and ready to give up, call for 



CAPTAIN^S FOOT ON" THE NECK OF A KING 205 

help, I beg you, upon the Christ, who has never yet 
been defeated or discouraged. 

When you come into touch with him you will 
catch his spirit, you will breathe his courage, and 
acquire his habit of victory. It is said that on one 
occasion the Duke of Wellington — whom they 
called the "Iron Duke'' — assigned to one of his 
veteran soldiers a very dangerous and difficult 
task. The man did not shrink from danger or 
duty, but his reply was, "I go, sir ; but first give me 
a grip of your conquering hand." 

O my brother, my sister, discouraged and de- 
feated by your sin, come, I beg you, and enlist un- 
der the banner of Jesus Christ. Get a grip of his 
conquering hand. You will feel new life running 
through all your moral nature. It will electrify 
your will ; it will arouse your love and gratitude ; 

it will clothe you with the spirit of a conqueror. 
14 



206 THE GBEAT SlNIfEES OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEK XVII 

The Scarlet Line iivr the Win'dow 

And she bound the scarlet line in the window.— Joshua 
li, 21. 

Here is a story full of human interest. Two 
soldiers are spying out the land which is to be cap- 
tured by their army. They are hunted, and in 
their emergency, when their lives hang on a thread, 
a woman comes to their rescue. She had been a 
bad woman, and her sins had not been covered up, 
but were known to all her little world. But she 
was a bright woman, and had come, in some way, 
to have more information about this army of 
Israel than most of the people of her city. She 
had heard enough about them and their history 
to believe in their God, and to have faith that he 
had power to give them success in taking possession 
of the land in which she lived. So when she saw 
these two spies hunted and in danger of death, she 
gladly risked her own life to befriend them, hoping 
thereby not only to do a kind deed to them, but to 
obtain protection for herself and for her family 



THE SCABLET LINE IN THE WINDOW 207 

when the city should be taken by the enemy. She 
hid the men on the top of her house as long as she 
dared, and then tied a scarlet cord about them, one 
at a time, and let them down over the wall of the 
city. What a picture it is ! I suppose that one of 
the spies helped her lower the first man to the 
ground, but when the next man's turn came Rahab 
alone was left to support his weight, and I can see 
her as she braces herself and with all her strength 
grips the cord in her hands until it cuts into her 
fingers as she lowers the spy in safety to the earth. 
The men were grateful for her kindness and 
were glad to pledge to her protection for the future, 
and so they said in answer to her appeal, "When 
we come into the land, thou shalt bind this line of 
scarlet thread in the window which thou didst let 
us down by : and thou shalt bring thy father, and 
thy mother, and thy brethren, and all thy father's 
household, home unto thee. . . . And who- 
soever shall be with thee in the house, his blood 
shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him." 
And we are assured by the eleventh chapter of 
Hebrews, that wonderful roll-call of the heroes 
of the faith, that the army of Israel respected 
the pledge that had been given by these two spies, 
and that Eahab was saved when the city was cap- 
tured. 



208 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

We have suggested in this story a fact which is 
apparent often, that the people who seem to be the 
w^orst are sometimes the first to perceive their dan- 
ger and turn away from their sins. Christ said 
that the publicans and sinners had a better chance 
of salvation in his day than the scribes and the 
Pharisees, and the same fact is often witnessed in 
our own time. 'No one of us will be acquitted at 
last by what we have done, for we have all come 
short of our privileges and have sins to answer for 
before God. If we are saved it will be because we 
have been forgiven of our sins through Jesus 
Christ. It is not justice which we want, but a 
pardon. "By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be 
justified." The law of God can never forgive us. 
Only through the pardon of God, given us because 
we have taken Jesus Christ as our Saviour and 
tied the scarlet thread of his dying blood in our 
window, can we ever be saved from the penalty ol 
the law. 

A Confederate soldier belonging to the army of 
northern Virginia was on trial before a military 
court for desertion. His name was Edward 
Cooper, and when he rose to plead he answered, 
"Not guilty." The judge advocate asked, "Who 
is your counsel ?" He replied, "I have no coun- 
sel." Supposing that it was Cooper's purpose to 



THE SCARLET LIITE IN THE WINDOW 209 

represent himself before tlie court, the judge ad- 
vocate was instructed to proceed. Every charge 
and specification against the prisoner was sus- 
tained. The prisoner was then told to introduce 
his witnesses. He said, "I have none." Aston- 
ished at the calmness with which he seemed to be 
submitting to what he regarded as inevitable fate, 
the judge advocate said to him, "Have you no de- 
fense? Is it possible that you abandoned your 
comrades and deserted your colors in the presence 
of the enemy without any reason ?" 

He answered, "There was a reason, but it will 
not avail me before a military court." 

The judge then said, "Perhaps you are mis- 
taken; you are charged with the highest crime 
known to military law, and it is your duty to make 
known the causes that influenced your actions." 

For the first time Cooper's manly form trembled 
and his eyes swam in tears. Approaching the presi- 
dent of the court he presented a letter, saying as he 
did so, "There, general, is what did it." 

General Battle opened the letter, and in a mo- 
ment his eyes filled with tears. It was passed from 
one to another of the court until all had seen it, 
and those stern warriors, who had passed with 
Stonewall Jackson through a score of battles, wept 
like children. As soon as the president sufficiently 



210 THE GREAT SIITNERS OF THE BIBLE 

recovered his self-possession he read the letter as 
the defense of the prisoner. It was in these words : 

"Dear Edward: I have always been proud of 
you; since your connection with the Confederate 
army I have been prouder of you than ever before. 
I would not have you do anything wrong for the 
world; but, before God, Edward, unless you come 
home we must die ! Last night I was aroused by 
little Eddie's crying, ^O mamma, I'm so hungry !' 
And Lucy, Edward, your darling Lucy, never 
complains, but grows thinner and thinner every 
day. And, before God, Edward, unless you come 
home we must die. Your Mary." 

Turning to the prisoner, General Battle asked, 
"What did you do when you received this letter ?" 

He replied, "I made application for a furlough, 
and it was rejected; I made another applica- 
tion, and it was rejected ; a third time I made ap- 
plication, and it was rejected; and that night, as I 
wandered backward and forward in the camp 
thinking of my home, the wild eyes of Lucy looking 
up to me, the burning words of Mary sinking in 
my brain, I was no longer the Confederate soldier ; 
I was the father of Lucy and the husband of Mary, 
and I would have passed those lines if every gun 
in the battery had been fired upon me. 



"When I arrived home Mary ran out to meet 
me, and embraced me and whispered, ^O Edward, 
I am so happy; I am so glad you got your fur- 
lough.' She must have felt me shudder, for she 
turned as pale as death and, catching her breath 
with every word, she said, ^Have you come without 
your furlough ? O Edward, go back ! Go back ! 
Let me and the children go down to the grave to- 
gether; but for heaven's sake save the honor of 
your name !' 

"And here I am, gentlemen ; not brought here by 
military power, but in obedience to the command 
of Mary, to abide the sentence of your court." 

Every officer of that court-martial felt the force 
of the prisoner's words. Before them stood in 
beatific vision the eloquent pleader for a husband's 
and a father's wrong ; but they had been trained by 
the great leader, Eobert E. Lee, to tread the path 
of duty though the lightning-flash scorched the 
ground beneath their feet, and each in his turn 
pronounced the verdict, "Guilty." 

Fortunately for humanity, the proceedings of 
the court were reviewed by the commanding gen- 
eral, and upon the record was written : 

"The finding of the court approved. The pris- 
oner is pardoned and will report to his company. 

"E. E. Lee, General" 



212 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

This story illustrates with great clearness how 
that, in strict justice, the guilty never can escape. 
1^0 one here could have so good a plea to excuse 
his sin against God as this man had to excuse his 
desertion. But there was no chance for his acquit- 
tal by a just court. His only chance was the par- 
don of the commanding general, and our only hope, 
as sinners against God, is the pardon of the Great 
Commander. But Jesus Christ has shed his own 
blood on the cross as a propitiation for our sins, 
and wherever that scarlet thread appears above the 
window of the heart, God will guarantee to us for- 
giveness and protection. 

I would like to lay emphasis on the part of a 
sinner in his own salvation. Kahab with her own 
hands let the spies down over the wall, and with 
those same hands she bound the scarlet cord in the 
window. There is a sense in which our salvation 
is wrought out for us, and there is another sense, 
equally as important, in which we may be said to 
"work out our own salvation." Our salvation 
does not hinge on the will of God, but upon our own 
will. God is willing to save us, and is seeking to 
persuade us to accept salvation. We must take 
hold upon it with our own hands. The Christian 
life is not passive or negative, but a positive seiz- 
ing hold of eternal life. 



THE SCARLET LIN^E IN THE WINDOW 213 

In asking you to accept Christ I am not inviting 
yon to a monotonous existence, but I am urging 
you to take hold on a triumphant and joyous career. 
I am asking you also to join hands with the very 
best people who live on the earth, and this not only 
in living a good life yourself, but in seeking to lift 
all men up to a better life. Julia Thayer sings : 



"The hands of the world— can't you see them to-day? 

The useless white hands, kept so shapely and fair; 
The hands of God's worker, one lifted to pray, 

And one reaching down for the burdens of care; 
The hardened brown hands, fo deformed and unsightly, 

Yet beautiful still with the pathos of toil; 
And the great hands of power, used wrongly or rightly; 

The hands stained with sinning, from which you recoil; 
The cultured, deft hands that are busy adorning 

The unfinished temples of learning and art; 
The hands in dark places that grope for the morning. 

And the poor, stricken hands that appeal to the heart; 
All these, if they'd clasp one another to-day, 
Could reach 'round the world in a wonderful way. 



"No one would be lonely, no lot wholly dreary, 

The thrill of our love would, magnetlike, give 
A strength to the faint and a joy to the weary, 

A lightness of being and courage to live. 
Then come, clasp these hands — Oh, how selfish to tarry 

When all the world needs you this moment so much! 
Rise with the will and a purpose to carry 

The help of your presence, the warmth of your touch. 



214 THE OEfiAT SII^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

They want yours, the hands that drop low in their weak- 
ness, 

Those heavy with burdens or empty with loss; 
They pray you to point with the spirit of meekness 

To Love's Burden-bearer who died on the cross. 
We all so much need one another to-day 
To girdle the globe with our hands in this way." 

I appeal to the very best that is in you that you 
cease your ungrateful course in refusing Christ 
your love and your service, and that you give him, 
from this hour, the use of your hand and your 
voice, and the love of your heart, and receive from 
him in turn not only the forgiveness of your sins, 
but the uplifting of his divine fellowship. As 
another has said, there are two courses open to the 
sinner. He may stifle or destroy for the time the 
thoughts and the feelings which mar his peace, or 
else a yearning, a longing, almost a demand, for 
relief shapes itself within him. Such a demand is 
the cry of the conscience, "What must I do to be 
saved r 

"Thou who hast borne all burdens, bear our load! 

Bear thou our load, whatever load it be; 

Our guilt, our shame, our helpless misery. 
Bear thou who only canst, O God, my God; 

Seek us and find us, for we cannot thee." 

If there be any soul here that has sympathy with 
that cry, hear the message of the Gospel, "Believe 



THE SGAELET LIITE IN THE WINDOW 215 

on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." 
"The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and 
with his stripes we are healed." Or yet again, 
"He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we 
might become the righteousness of God in him." 

Sidney Watson, a converted London waif, now 
a popular author of Christian books in England, 
relates that while a prisoner in the East Indies he 
had as fellow-prisoner an old Scotch soldier who, 
after traveling over half the globe, was there dying. 
From a period of unconsciousness he opened his 
eyes and glanced around as if surprised at his sur- 
roundings, murmuring brokenly, "I thought me in 
my mither's cot in Perthshire." After a pause, 
with a quiet, fixed, peaceful look heavenward he 
gasped, "ITae ither name — one Mediator — Jesus 
Christ — ^he is faithful — ^just — forgive sin." His 
mind wandered again for a moment, but his soldier 
training came back to him and he tried to raise his 
head as he said, short and sharp, with a dying en- 
ergy, "Password ? Yes ! Blood of Christ — Christ 
cleanseth from all sin." A thrill passed through 
his frame, and the watchers knew that he had 
passed the guard into the presence of the King. 

There is only one password into eternal glory, 
and that is the "Blood of Christ." Bind the scarlet 
thread in the window of your heart and be at peace. 



216 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Poetic Justice as Illustrated in the Tragic 
Story of Adoni-bezek 

As I have done, so God hath requited me.— Judges i, 7. 

Adoni-bezek was a cruel old man. He lived by 
the sword and he perished by it. For a long time 
nobody could stand against him in battle. Every- 
thing went his way. Victory after victory crowned 
his banners. The story of the wars of Adoni-bezek 
have never been written. We have only the little 
glimpse into them from this statement of his, that 
seventy kings that had been captured by him had 
been put to torture, and had been humiliated and 
mortified, by having their thumbs and their great 
toes cut oft* and by being made to pick up crumbs 
under his table, as one might feed a hungry dog. 
The imagination can easily supply the long tales of 
war and ravage that lie in the darkness of oblivion 
behind those threescore and ten kings and their 
cruel humiliation. 

But Adoni-bezeVs time was coming. There 
came a day when the lucky star in which he boasted 



POETIC JUSTICE ILLUSTRATED 217 

forsook him, and the stars in their courses seemed 
to fight against him. He was captured, and very 
naturally his captors, remembering the stories of 
the peculiar torture to which he had been accus- 
tomed to put his captives — stories that had given 
him an inglorious fame throughout all the neigh- 
boring nations — submitted him to the same hu- 
miliation. 

Adoni-bezek, with all his savagery, must have 
had the philosophic temperament, for he recognizes 
at once the poetic justice in his punishment. He 
does not complain when he is himself brutally tor- 
tured in the same way in which he had treated 
others. With very clear discrimination he recog- 
nizes that his sinful life had not only been a war- 
fare against his fellow-men, but a sin against God. 
He sees clearly that in this punishment which 
comes to him at the hand of his captors they are 
not the chief factors. It is coming from the hand 
of God. "As I have done," says the despairing old 
king — and it seems to have been the last utterance 
of his life, for the next sentence tells of his death — 
"so God hath requited me." 

I think there is something striking in the con- 
sensus of opinion that a justice which metes out 
punishment of the same peculiar kind as the man's 
sin should be called "poetic justice." If a man in 



218 THE GBEAT SINNERS OP THE BIBLE 

his youth has been mean and ungrateful toward 
his parents, and treated them harshly, and years 
afterward, when his own hair is getting gray, his 
children turn against him with hard and selfish 
hearts, people say it is "poetic justice." If a man 
is miserly and greedy and dishonest in business, 
gathering money without caring how he gets it, un- 
scrupulous in his methods, and some competitor, 
equally unscrupulous but with more cunning, cir- 
cumvents him, and robs him of his ill-gotten gains, 
people are inclined to smile and say it is "poetic 
justice." We say so because we recognize that 
poetic justice is ideal justice, and that this is a rare 
thing in this world among men. But justice is 
always poetic with God. God does not have a judg- 
ment day every week, but at last there shall be 
meted out poetic justice to every man and woman 
in the world. 

This tells as truly on the side of goodness and its 
rewards as in the punishment of evil. God gives 
a man blessings in heart and soul after the kind 
of his deeds of righteousness. I shall never forget 
the glow of supreme joy and comfort I saw recently 
in the glistening eyes and lighted face of a man of 
nearly fourscore, who was telling me about his 
coming to this country when only a youth, leav- 
ing the dear old mother, who had been a faithful 



POETIC JUSTICE ILLUSTEATED 219 

Christian mother to him, in England. He came 
over here and was lonesome and homesick, and in 
that hour of homesickness he gave his heart to 
Christ and became a very happy Christian. With 
joyous face he told me how he wrote home to his 
mother about it, and how happy she was, and how 
she prized those letters, and how proud she was of 
them, and how, when she came to die, she showed 
her great love for him and her appreciation of him 
by making a dying request that all the letters from 
her boy in the new land should be put as a pillow 
under her head in her coffin. And all the years 
since, as that man has gone on doing his work in 
the world, growing old like the palm tree described 
in the Bible, his heart has been given courage and 
his soul has been refreshed by the joy with which 
he had comforted his mother's heart. 

Be sure that this is God's world, and there is no 
such thing as chance. It is no gambler's luck with 
which we are dealing. We are not throwing dice 
with fate in these human lives of ours. It is no 
haphazard at which we are playing. It is a world 
of cause and effect, a world where like produces 
like, a world where we shall receive according to 
our conduct. We have here a lesson for every one 
of us. God is no respecter of persons. He does 
not have one standard for the treatment of Adoni- 



220 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

bezek and another for us. The great principles of 
right and wrong run through the universe like 
threads through a bolt of cloth. They are the same 
in one age as in another. A sowing of envj and 
jealousy will produce strife and murder as surely 
now as in the days of Cain. A seedtime of hard- 
heartedness and stiff-necked resistance to God's 
commandment will still further harden the heart 
and prevent the day of repentance as surely in our 
day as in the time of Pharaoh and the plagues in 
Egypt. Cruelty will breed cruelty and perpetuate 
it as certainly in Cleveland as in the empire of 
Adoni-bezek. 

We should remember that no sin is a separate 
and individual thing, having no relation to the 
other portions of our career. Every sin is a seed 
that is self -perpetuating, and produces still further 
evil harvest to sow still more widely the spirit of 
anarchy and rebellion against God. 

There is this other very important thought in 
our text : Our sin is not merely bad policy, or mis- 
take of judgment, or even a wrong done against 
our fellow-men. It is a sin against God. Sin is 
contempt for our Creator, our Eather, our Pre- 
server, our Judge. I think there is a vast amount 
of teaching in our time which rather fosters the 
idea that sin is more bad policy than anything else, 



POETIC JUSTICE ILLUSTEATED 221 

and the keen edge is lost off the truth that sin is a 
crime against God that merits and requires pun- 
ishment. Of course it is true that sin is unwise, 
that it is a bad policy; true that drunkenness 
wastes physical strength, unbalances the mind, de- 
praves the heart; true that greed despoils all the 
finer feelings of the soul, and brutalizes the man- 
hood and womanhood ; true that lust dethrones the 
spiritual, and puts the reins of life into the hands 
of the animal ; true that falsehood demoralizes all 
the strength of the personality, and lets loose the 
mental and moral nature into chaos ; true that the 
sinner can never tell when conscience will rise up 
and betray him, even in this world, to destruction. 
But while all that is true, it is the smaller part of 
the ruin which sin works. Sin is crime against 
God, it is a wrong against the moral nature itself, 
it is a violation of the very law of our being, and 
makes necessary a judgment day and a time of pun- 
ishment. 

Old Adoni-bezek was thoroughly scriptural in 
his idea that his captors were, though entirely un- 
conscious, no doubt, themselves, God's agents, who 
were requiting him according to his deeds for his 
evil ways. Judgment is as surely coming for the 
sinner to-day as to this hoary-headed sinner of 

ancient times. How strange that we should go on 
15 



222 THE GKEAT SINNESS OF THE BIBLE 

sinning against God as though no record were heing 
kept of our doings. Yet there is a double record 
being kept. First, a record is being kept in our 
own memories, in the very fiber of our being. A 
record is being treasured up there that will be all 
the more legible when the body shall be left behind, 
like an eld house, and we stand unsheltered before 
God. But there is another record being kept in the 
memory of God, a record which is absolutely per- 
fect and from which there can be no appeal. 

One day a young boy came home very angry with 
a schoolmate about something that had happened 
on the playground. He told his sister about it, and 
the more he thought and talked of it the angrier he 
grew, and he began to say terribly harsh, bitter, 
and unreasonable things about his comrade. Some 
of the things he said the sister knew were not true ; 
but he was too angry and excited to weigh his 
words. She listened for a moment and then said 
very gently : 

"Would you dare tell God that, Ealph V 

The boy paused as if someone had struck him. 
He felt the rebuke implied in her words, and he 
realized how wickedly and untruthfully he had 
spoken. 

"ITo, I wouldn't tell God that," he said, with a 
red face. 



POETIC JUSTICE ILLUSTRATED 223 

"Then I wouldn't tell it to anybody/' said the 
sister. 

And yet we are telling God every angry, unrea- 
sonable, wicked thing we say. We are telling him 
every unholy purpose we form, every stubborn re- 
sistance to his will. What a cruel treasury we may 
gather for ourselves in this way. 

We have suggested to us here that we are judged 
by our deeds and not by our impulses or our wishes. 
Some people deceive their own hearts by imagining 
that there is, in some vague, undefined way, virtue 
in their hours of daydreams when they have 
visions of goodness, which, alas ! are never ful- 
filled. Many people are like the son mentioned in 
the Gospel parable, who, when his father com- 
manded him to go and work in his vineyard, replied 
promptly, "I go, sir,'' but who never went. There 
was absolutely no value in that boy's complacent 
impulse to do what his father wanted, but who, 
when the time came for action, chose to go selfishly 
on his own path. So many people now are answer- 
ing God, "I go, sir," but they never go. Many 
read a book which stirs their emotions in regard to 
some misery of the poor, and they seem to hear the 
voice of God in it, saying to them, "Go, heal the 
heartache, relieve the distress, brighten the sky of 
those whose lives are dark and cheerless." And 



224 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

they say promptly, "I go, sir." But they wipe 
their tears, and their emotion passes, and their 
lives go on as selfishly as ever. Again, some sud- 
den disaster, or some striking punishment follow- 
ing iniquity, startles the community, and many 
people read it with blanched faces and trembling 
hearts as they picture to themselves the murder, 
or the suicide, or the bankruptcy, or the shame and 
disgrace, or the heart-breaking agony that has fol- 
lowed like a isTemesis in the wake of some man^s or 
some woman^s sin. Conscience rises up and says, 
"He was no greater sinner than you. He thought 
his sin would never be punished; but his judg- 
ment day came and jours hastens ; rise up at once 
and repent of your sins, and turn from your wicked 
ways." And the soul answers, "I go, sir," but the 
emotion dies away, conscience is thrust into the 
background, the world comes in like a flood, and no 
real repentance comes from it. 

I know that I am not speaking in riddles to you. 
I am not telling you things you do not understand. 
Some of you, as you have listened, have seen your 
own portrait in the rude and simple sketches I have 
drawn. In God's name, do not let this appeal go 
the way of all the rest. You have been aroused 
many times before to the exceeding sinfulness of 
your sin, and have promised yourself to repent, 



POETIC JUSTICE ILLUSTEATED 226 

only to fall the deeper into the mire. Put every 
good impulse into action now. Incarnate your 
good wishes into deeds. Eise up by the grace of 
God to repent of your sin and to cry out to Jesus 
Christ for refuge. In him is your hope, not be- 
cause he can change the character of sin, but be- 
cause he took your load of sin on his own shoulders 
and suffered in your stead, and if you accept him as 
your Saviour, God will impute your sin to him. 
He will transfer your guilt to Christ's account, and 
you may be pardoned and forgiven. The sense of 
guilt will be taken out of your soul and you will go 
forth, free and cleansed, to lead a new life of right- 
eousness and peace. 

^o matter how hard a place you are in, Christ 
is able to reach you there, and lead you out of your 
distress. 

Samuel H. Hadley, superintendent of the old 
Jerry McAuley Water Street Mission, New York, 
now one of the purest and noblest of men, was once 
a poor drunkard in the gutter. When he had 
pawned his last thing, and the alternative faced 
him of becoming a tramp or jumping in the river, 
he found his way to the mission, and this is his 
recollection of the prayer which Jerry McAuley 
offered over his bowed head : "Dear Saviour, won't 
you look down in pity on this poor soul ? He needs 



226 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

your help, Lord. He can't get along without it. 
Blessed Jesus, this sinner has got himself into a 
bad hole. Won't you help him out ?" 

Then, with Jerry's hand upon his head, Hadley 
tried to pray for himself: "Dear Jesus, can you 
help me ?" The gloom that had filled him gave 
way to a precious feeling of safety and strength, 
and he has lived a glorious life ever since. There 
was a scriptural warrant for that prayer of Mc- 
Auley's. Does not David say, "He inclined unto 
me, and heard me cry. He brought me up also out 
of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my 
feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And 
he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise 
unto our God ?" He will do all that for you if you 
will give him your hand and your heart. 



THE Sli^lTEE's FIGHT AGAIJS"ST THE STAES 227 



CHAPTEE XIX 

The Siniter^s Fight Against the Stabs 

They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses 
fought against Sisera..— Judges v, 20. 

The immediate cause of the utterance of this 
poetic and often-quoted text was probably Deb- 
orah's remembrance of a terrific thunderstorm in 
which the flash of the lightning and the roar of the 
thunder added materially to the confusion of the 
horses attached to the war chariots of Sisera. 
There is an indication of this in the twenty-second 
verse, where the destruction of the enemy at the 
river Kishon is being described, and it is said, 
"Then were the horsehoof s broken by the means of 
the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones." 
This storm, which seemed to bring the forces of the 
skies into the battle, is taken advantage of by 
Deborah and Barak in their song of victory, and 
is used with sublime poetic effect. There is prob- 
ably not a passage in the Bible more frequently 
quoted by great orators dealing with the theme of 
the onward sweep of righteousness and the inherent 
weakness of a bad cause. 



228 THE GREAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

The text is susceptible of a very much deeper 
meaning than the one I have suggested as the 
probable cause of its utterance, and there is no 
doubt that in the heart of the singers there was the 
faith that God himself had marshaled the heavens 
above to fight in defense of his people and to in- 
sure the overthrow of their powerful enemy. Our 
theme, then, is very simple and easy to be under- 
stood. If a man is doing right he may be sure that 
God is on his side. So long as we are obedient to 
God in nature and in grace, in physical as well as 
in spiritual realms, we may be certain that all the 
forces of the universe are marshaled on our side. 
Paul must have had this thought in his mind when 
he said, "All things work together for good to them 
that love God." On the other hand, if we do 
wrong, if we disobey God, we put ourselves out of 
joint, so to speak, with the universe of which we 
are a part. While goodness means harmony, 
wickedness means discord. The man who sins 
against God puts all the forces of the universe at 
war against himself. Things that seemed to be very 
far away from him, and to have no interest in him, 
become his enemies, and achieve his overthrow, 
when he puts himself in antagonism to the right- 
eous laws of God's government. 

The man who does right, who lives in obedience 



THE sinner's fight AGAINST THE STARS 229 

to God, finds hidden treasure laid up for him in 
unexpected places all along the path of life, be- 
cause everything is working for his advantage; 
while the man who sins against God walks a path 
that is ambushed by unknown enemies who are 
likely to spring upon him to his destruction at an 
unthought-of moment. 

Sisera stands as a representative of those who 
fight against God. He seems to have been a bril- 
liant fellow, a strong personality, a man full of 
vigor, and with many of those qualities which make 
one a leader among men. But he despised the God 
who had so thoroughly given evidence of his favor 
toward the people of Israel. Every advantage 
seemed to be on his side ; he had military prestige, 
he was a great general with a famous name, he had 
a large army finely equipped for those days; but 
the people who fought against him had God on 
their side, and he went down in destruction before 
a force against which he was powerless to contend. 

We may see in the death of Sisera a suggestion, 
also, of the great truth that the glamour which 
seems to surround sin in the distance is all lost in 
the shame and humiliation of the reality. A sol- 
dier, if he must die, longs to die on the battlefield 
at the head of his men, leading them to victory. 
How the heart of the world has caught up the death 



230 THE GEEAT SII^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

of the joung and intrepid Wolfe at the capture of 
Quebec ! The artist and the poet and the historian 
have made the most of those last words of the bril- 
liant young soldier who was dying, but whose spirit 
was recalled for a moment, seemingly, by the news 
of victory, and he exclaimed, "Then I die content !" 
Sisera, no doubt, had gone into battle with 
thought of the possibility of danger to himself, and 
had pictured how, if death came, it would be when 
he was selling his life at a great price while val- 
iantly inspiring his own troops. But how differ- 
ent was the end, and how humiliating to such a 
soldier! He was not only defeated, but routed, 
and finally the only hope of escape left to him was 
in slipping out of his carriage and running away 
alone, a poor refugee from the enemy. And as he 
ran he saw in the distance the tent of Jael, the wife 
of Heber the Kenite, the representative of a tribe 
that was supposed to be neutral to the combatants 
in this war. Jael saw him coming and went out to 
meet him, and said to him, "Turn in, my lord, turn 
in to me ; fear not.'' And as it seemed to be the 
only place of refuge, and with perhaps the most 
absolute confidence in the woman's hospitable in- 
tention toward him, he went into her tent and she 
covered him over with a mantle. Sisera, greatly 
exhausted, and with his lips swollen and his throat 



THE SINI^ER^S FIGHT AGAINST THE STABS 231 

parched with thirst, said as she turned to leave 
him, '^Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink ; 
for I am thirsty.'' And the woman took a bottle of 
milk, one of those old goatskin bags of that day, 
no doubt, and gave him a refreshing drink and 
covered him up again. And Sisera said to her, 
"Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be, 
when any man doth come and inquire of thee, and 
say. Is there any man here ? that thou shalt say, 

And so Sisera, tired out, utterly defeated and 
broken down, gave way to the prostration of his 
physical strength and fell asleep in fancied secu- 
rity. Before long Jael, standing sentinel there at 
the door of the tent, knows by the regular, heavy 
breathing of the tired man that he has forgotten 
his troubles and fallen asleep. In the morning 
when Jael saw Sisera going out to battle, his army 
covering the hills and his troops swarming down 
through the valleys, with spear and helmet and 
buckler, she never dreamed that Sisera would come 
to destruction by her weak hand. But now all is 
changed, the great army has melted away, the war 
chariots are broken in pieces, the war horses have 
been drowned in the river, and Sisera, stripped of 
all the gaudy trappings of war, lies here, a poor, 
helpless, sleeping man, in her tent, at her mercy. 



232 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

The moment she hears him breathing unconsciously 
she seems to have formed her purpose, if indeed 
she had not had that in her mind all the time, from 
the moment she recognized him flying toward her 
tent. Very quietly she takes a nail that was used in 
fastening down the corners of the tent, and the 
heavy mallet that was meant to drive it, and softly 
and stealthily as fate, that she may not disturb the 
sleeping warrior, she creeps in through the tent 
door, drops on one knee close to his head, and, 
placing the nail on the temple uppermost, with a 
quick savage blow of the hammer drives the sharp 
nail through his head and fastens him to the 
ground. There is a convulsive struggle, arms 
thrown wildly in the air, a moan, heavy breathing 
for a moment, and then the muscles cease to twitch, 
and bloody and still the warrior lies dead, pinned 
to the earth by a tent pin driven by a woman's 
hand. 

Surely no soldier could ever have had a meaner 
end than that. But that is not too strong an illus- 
tration of the way sin deceives us into believing 
that at the worst it will bring us much pleasure 
and prosperity and honor. The glamour is all in 
our imagination and in the lying promises of the 
devil. The devil promised Eve that if she ate of 
the forbidden fruit she should become wise like a 



THE SIIfNEE^S FIGHT AGAINST THE STAES 233 

god. There was a fascination about that. It 
might be dangerous, there might be peril in it, but 
the glamour of that promise enthralled her imagi- 
nation. What about the reality? Banishment 
from the Garden of Eden, in shame and disgrace, 
to a life cursed by thorns and thistles, by pain and 
sorrow and tears. All the promises of happiness 
and peace to the sinner through sinful courses are 
as deceptive as that. The man who is sinning 
against God fondly dreams that he is going to be 
able to so plan, and to so execute his plans, that he 
shall always be able to escape the punishment of 
his sins ; but the unexpected is always happening 
to the sinner. When Sisera was counting up the 
forces he had to meet in battle that day, he did not 
count on the thunderstorm and its fierce lightning 
that was to turn his war horses wild with panic. 
He did not count among his enemies Jael or her 
tribe ; if he thought of her at all it was as a friend. 
But when a man wars against God he meets un- 
expected foes at every turn. How many passages 
of Scripture there are which bear out this truth ! 
"When they shall say, Peace and safety ; then sud- 
den destruction cometh upon them." Or hear that 
word that Christ uttered about the man with the 
great farm, whose crops were so bountiful that he 
had no place to store away his harvests. Yet in 



234 THE GBEAT SmiSTERS OF THE BIBLE 

that hour of abundance he had no thought of the 
poor who were starving, or of gratitude to God who 
had given him all these good things, and deter- 
mined that he would build him larger barns and 
then comfort himself bj saying, ''Soul, take thine 
ease, for thou hast much goods laid up for many- 
years." Christ declares that the stinging rebuke 
that fell like an arrow from the skies was, "Thou 
fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee." 
In the story of the girls, wise and foolish, which I 
read for our lesson, there were -^ye that slept in 
indifference and carelessness, when suddenly the 
cry rang out, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh ; go 
ye out to meet him." These messages tell us that 
we must always be at peace with God if we would 
be safe. The sinner has no reason for peace. In 
the very nature of things he is forever in danger. 
Hear the message to-night, and put yourself in 
friendship with the universe by confessing your 
sins against God and finding forgiveness of them 
in Jesus's name. 

There is a most pathetic touch to this story of 
Sisera told in this same song of Deborah and 
Barak. Sisera's mother was waiting at home, ex- 
pecting her son to be victorious, but watching 
eagerly, as a mother will. And when he did not 
come back as early as she expected, she began to 



THE SlNNER'^S FIGST AGAINST THE STAES 235 

worry about it. The writer says, ^^The mother of 
Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through 
the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming ? 
Why tarry the wheels of his chariots V^ 

Is a Christian mother or father saying that about 
you to-night ? O, the loving, solicitous letters I 
get nearly every week from parents whose sons and 
daughters are in this city. Sisera's mother must 
have been heart-broken when she found he would 
never come again. Are you going to bring heart- 
break or comfort to those who love you? Give 
your heart to Christ to-night, and make glad the 
hearts that have prayed for you since your child- 
hood. 



236 THE GEE AT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTEE XX 

The Shibboleth of Fate 

And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before 
the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephra- 
imites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the 
men of Gilead said unto him. Art thou an Ephraimite? 
If he said. Nay; then said they unto him, Say now Shib- 
boleth; and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to 
pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at 
the passages of Jordan.— Judges xii, 5, 6. 

The general who devised that scheme of finding 
ont the truth about the stragglers who were cap- 
tured was, whatever else may be said about him, 
a very shrewd man. It seemed to have been an 
almost infallible test. The whole tribe or nation 
had lost the power to pronounce the sound of what 
w^e call the letter ^^h.'^ Little by little it had passed 
out of their speech, and though in general they 
spoke the same language as their neighbors, they 
spoke a language impoverished for the lack of this 
single sound ; and this bright soldier in command of 
the Gileadites took advantage of this deformity 
of speech to prevent the escape of those who had 



THE SHIBBOLETH OF FATE 237 

already escaped from the battlefield. It was a test 
which it was impossible for them to evade. Every 
man born and reared among the Ephraimites had 
been brought up with this defect of speech, and now 
it betrayed him into the hands of his enemies. 

This word ^^Shibboleth" has gone into the lan- 
guage of the world. It has been given, for the most 
part, in our time a rather unpopular and con- 
temptible meaning, as indicating the unreasonable 
demand of some faction who refuse to believe in 
the truth or righteousness of any except those who 
pronounce their particular ^^Shibboleth" of words 
as representing faith in matters of religion. There 
is, however, it seems to me, a very great and im- 
portant message which is very naturally suggested 
by this interesting little story — ^that a man must 
pass in the end for what he is ; that a man's char- 
acter, the real bed-rock principles upon which his 
life is built, his inner self, must finally dictate his 
destiny. "The Shibboleth of fate" is that a man 
must stand or fall by himself, his own personality. 
As an Ephraimite could not suddenly, at will, 
change the language his mother taught him ; could 
not, if he would, at command learn the new sounds 
which his tongue had never known how to speak — 
so in the great testing emergencies of life the man 

you are, the woman you are, will hold your fate 
16 



288 THE GEEAt SINITERS OF THE BIBLE 

in its own hand. The inner self will speak out and 
decide where you belong. 

I have been reading recently a very interesting 
paper, by Rev. John Hopkins Denison, which pur- 
ports to give a highly scientific theory of the evolu- 
tion by which the birds came to fly in the air. 
According to this theory, in the early days of the 
history of the earth, and long before man came, a 
queer creature poked its head out of the water at 
the edge of the ocean. He had an ugly snout, like 
a fish, only that at the end it was prolonged into a 
sort of horny bill with sharp little teeth set in it. 
His body was long and slimy and wriggly, like a 
fat eel, but he had two crooked, ungainly legs, with 
hooked claws, and at his shoulders were great flop- 
ping, awkward things that looked half like wings 
and half like fins. It would have been a puzzle 
to tell whether he was a fish or a bird. It is rather 
doubtful if he knew himself. He had been lying 
quietly enough down on the mud bottom, breathing 
in the cold water through his gills, when suddenly, 
as he had looked up with his glassy eyes toward the 
sunlight that was streaming in through the water, 
there had come over him a restless, unhappy feel- 
ing, a desire to get out of the mud and swim up- 
w^ard toward the light. And when his head was out 
of the water he found that he could draw the fresh, 



THE SHIBBOLETH OF FATE 

warm air in a new way into what was certainly the 
beginning of a pair of lungs; and as he sunned 
himself in the warmth and light there came over 
him a strong feeling that he belonged in this 
higher world, and not down in the mud at the bot- 
tom of the sea. ^o bird wing had yet smitten the 
air, and there did not seem to be much chance for 
a bird in this ugly, awkward, slimy creature who 
was beginning to feel that he was meant to be a bird. 
He stood on the shore and flapped his awkward 
stumps of wings. The thrill of the bright air was 
in his lungs, the glow of a new life was pulsing in 
his veins. His blood was no longer the cold, life- 
less fluid that flows through the gills of the fish. 
It was warm ! It was the hot, red blood that carries 
life from the air in the lungs to every tingling bit 
of the body. He seemed to feel it ready to burst 
forth and clothe his slimy skin with a growth of 
feathery plumage. It was urging him on and up 
into the blue sky above. He must fly. Once more 
he flapped the ungainly wings, one spring with the 
crooked legs, and he was up in the air above the 
sea, above the earth. How glorious it was to behold 
the green hills and valleys below, the radiant sun 
and the pure atmosphere everywhere. And just 
then he flew over a quiet pool, and as he passed he 
saw the reflection of his form in the still water. 



240 THE GREAT SIiq^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

There he was, ugly, awkward, flapping his great 
stumpy wings, and wriggling along his slimy body 
with his crooked legs and huge claws sticking out 
in all directions. He was suddenly discouraged. 
What is he, ugly, awkward creature that he is, 
doing up there in the air and sunlight ? His place 
is down in the mud. A few more spasmodic, tired 
flaps, and down he goes into the water with a great 
splash, and down into the ooze and slime of the 
ocean's bed. 

But he could not stay in the water. Again he 
heard the call of the sunshine.- Once more he 
crept forth into the air, and again the premonition 
of the bird life came back to him. He felt his 
lungs expand, he felt the hot blood flow, he felt 
again the passion for the sky. It was awkward 
work at first, and pitiful, to see the great ungainly 
thing trying to be a bird and fly. But he stayed in 
the air and slowly the change came. Long after, 
if any man had stood upon the earth, he would 
have seen a bird with great sweeping wings and 
glistening plumage soar upward from the low shore 
toward the sky. There is no awkwardness now, 
nothing ungainly in the movement. Stroke by 
stroke those great wings carry the glorious eagle 
resistlessly upward. He is at home now in the 
vast blue realm of the sky, bathed in the sunshine, 



THE SHIBBOLETH OF FATE 241 

buoyed on the air, confidently soaring above the 
highest mountain peaks. 

'Now, I have retold to yon this scientific sup- 
position because it is, I think, a very suggestive 
illustration of the transformation which must come 
to a man or a woman who has been given over to a 
worldly life, living without reference to God and 
Christ and immortality, before there may be hope 
of enteriug into the joy and glory of a spiritual 
life in this or any world. This creature, born to be 
a bird, could no more help having hot blood in the 
air than he could keep himself from having cold 
blood in the water. By remaining in the air the 
gills of the fish little by little disappeared, and he 
became a bird. If he had remained in the water 
all the fishy characteristics would have developed. 
His possible wings would have become fins, the 
bird life would have lost its power to charm him, 
and he would have settled down into the mud for- 
ever. So with the higher possibilities of man. 
You yourself must decide the Shibboleth of fate. 
It is for you to say whether you will live the 
worldly life of the flesh or the high and holy life 
of the Spirit. There are many degrees of present 
morality, but the great choice must be made and 
that will settle destiny. It is a far cry from Kip- 
ling's Filipino, "Half-devil and half-child," to 



242 THE GREAT SINNEKS OF THE BIBLE 

Browning's tribute to his wife, whom he terms 
'^Half -angel and half -bird ;" but wherever you may 
be in the scale of moral quality, the final decision 
is in your hands, and you must utter that "Shib- 
boleth of fate" which shall declare whether you are 
to sink down into the life of the appetites and pas- 
sions and lusts, a mere worldly creature, or climb 
upward into the light and give yourself up to the 
sun-lit life of the Spirit. 

There is no more horrible delusion of the devil 
than that discouraging and disheartening thing 
which he whispers to us, that the upper life, the 
life of purity and love, is impossible for us ; that 
we have not in us the capacity to breathe that 
holy atmosphere, and have no powers of flight to 
buoy ourselves in the face of the Sun of Righteous- 
ness ; that the lower ooze and slime of base tempers 
and evil passions is the atmosphere, and the only 
atmosphere, suited for such as we are. It is a 
devil's slander. We were born, the poorest of us, 
the weakest of us, the most awkward and ungainly 
of us in a moral way, to be the sons of God, and 
that sunlight of beauty and truth that has sought 
us out even in the muddy atmosphere where we 
have lain is not meant to mock us, but to beckon us 
upward and onward to the glorious life which is 
possible for us. And if we will give ourselves a 



THE SHIBBOLETH OF FATE 243 

chance to breathe in God's Spirit every day, to have 
fellowship with the Christian graces, the warm 
blood of the heavenly love life will course through 
our veins, and our souls will rejoice to fly in the 
face of the sky. 

The thing I want to impress on you most of all 
is that the Shibboleth of fate — ^your fate — is not 
in some other hands, not even the hand of God, but 
in your own. And we should never forget, in deal- 
ing with the most disheartened bit of humanity, 
that we are dealing with a kingly nature. He may 
be an uncro^vned king, he may even be a dethroned 
king ; but every individual is a monarch, neverthe- 
less, over his own fate. 

Eobert Louis Stevenson, the novelist, was once 
walking with a friend when a tramp came up and 
begged alms. Stevenson said he would give him 
something if he might first give him a lecture, and 
thereupon he launched into a flow of oratory, bril- 
liant, learned, humorous, and pathetic, making of 
the beggar before him a type of human failure, and 
pointing the way to rise above it ; a lay sermon, in 
fact, broad in its charity, profound in its learning, 
rich in its intuition and wide philosophy. He fin- 
ished rather abruptly and gave some money to the 
beggar, who touched his ragged cap and said: 
"Thank ye, sir, as much for what yeVe said as for 



244 THE GREAT SINITEES OF THE BIBLE 

what ye've given me ; I'm not very often taken to 
be still a man.'' 

It is the manhood in jon, that spark of divine 
inheritance which clings to you, to which I make 
my appeal. I know there is in yon that which 
answers to the appeal to turn from your sin to a 
noble and spiritual life. 

Dr. Bonar tells us that, in the days when the 
Mosque of Omar was first built over that spot of 
Mount Moriah where the worshiper could touch a 
piece of the unhewn original rock of the hill, it 
was customary to bring loads of incense and aro- 
matic shrubs into the shrine, which was called 
Sakhrah. As a consequence, if anyone had been 
worshiping there he carried away with him so 
much of the fragrance of the place that when people 
passed him in the market place of Jerusalem or in 
the streets they used to say to each other, "He has 
been in the Sakhrah to-day!" It is our glorious 
possibility to so live that we may come forth daily 
with our garments of conversation and conduct 
smelling of the holy communion and fellowship we 
have had with God. How strange and unnatural 
it is that we should have in us this dream of the 
best things, this longing for the holiest life, and yet 
go for years and years making no response to it ! 

Mr. Moody tells of a poor mother who had an 



THE SHIBBOLETH OF FATE 245 

only child who was idiotic, and on the day when it 
was fourteen years of age a neighbor came in and 
found the mother weeping in the bitterness of her 
soul. She wanted to know what was the matter. 
The mother said : "For fourteen years I have cared 
for that child day and night ; I have given up so- 
ciety and spent my tim.e with her ; and to-day she 
does not know me from you. If she would recog- 
nize me once it would pay me for all I have ever 
done for her." How many there are for whom 
Jesus died, and whom he has watched over and 
cared for and blessed, and to whom he has mani- 
fested infinite love and tenderness, who yet have 
never once recognized him, have never looked up 
into his face and said, "Thank you, dear Lord 
Jesus !" 



246 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBL£ 



CHAPTER XXI 

The Man with a Low Aim 

Abdon the son of Hillel, a Pirathonite, judged Israel. 
And he had forty sons and thirty nephews, that rode on 
threescore and ten ass colts.— Judges xii, 13, 14. 

There's a biograplij for you with a vengeance ! 
Seventy young men, whose father's and uncle's of- 
ficial position had to be recognized in a historical 
account, devoted themselves so assiduously and 
completely to the art and style of their riding of 
ass colts that, either by way of sarcasm, or from 
what other motive I know not, the writer of the 
book of Judges pauses in his historical narrative to 
mention the most notable event in the course of 
these young men's lives. The author is one who 
liked to tell a good story, who rejoiced in narrating 
deeds of heroism, and would have sung the glory of 
Judge Abdon's sons if there had been any glory to 
sing. But, alas ! there was not. The only interest- 
ing thing about them was that there were so many 
of them that when they went out riding it took a 
herd of seventy ass colts to furnish them with a 
mount. Why these particular young fellows should 



THE MAN WITH A LOW AIM 247 

have been selected to bear the irony of history I do 
not know. They are certainly not the only ones 
who have slighted the great opportunities of life 
and given themselves np to the lowest and meanest 
aims. As I was meditating on this little incident 
it occurred to me that there is not a better text in 
all the Bible to illustrate the folly of courting fail- 
ure to one's life through entering on it with a low 
aim. 

In the days when these men lived there were 
great opportunities for achievement, as there have 
been and are in every age. There is always a 
Goliath for a David to slay. There is ever a roar- 
ing lion for a young Samson to tear in pieces. A 
Jonathan never fails to find a friend on whom to 
lavish his affection. There were plenty of wrongs 
for these men to right, abundant opportunity for 
heroic service that would have given them a glori- 
ous immortality. They had the vantage ground of 
being of the judge's family, which in those days, 
before the kings of Israel, was really the royal 
family. But these young princes of the realm, like 
many modern princes, were destitute of the prince- 
ly spirit. To ride an ass colt in the style of the 
day, and to the admiration of the crowd, was the 
height of their ambition. The figure of a lone mule 
with an empty saddle would have been a proper 



248 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

effigy on the tombstone of the descendants of Judge 
Abdon. 

But I have not chosen this little story with the 
intention of devoting time to the heaping of con- 
tempt on these riders of ass colts in the days of the 
judges. It is the men like them to-day that I am 
interested in. It is their kith and kin, who live 
about us now, and who come to hear me preach, 
who arouse my interest and attention. The Bible 
holds its power through the ages because, more than 
any other book in the world, it is vital with life, 
human and divine. These life sketches, every one 
of them, have their message, full of suggestion, to 
the men of our day. 

My message then, to-night, is that a low aim is 
the greatest folly, and will dictate certain failure. 
There is no hope for a man whose aim is so low that 
if he attains to it there will be no real glory in his 
life. The man who aims high may fail of reaching 
his fondest dreams, though it is an abiding faith 
with me that he need not fail if his dreams are 
noble enough to come true. But the man who aims 
low is doomed from the beginning, for the nearer 
he reaches his aim the worse he is off. 

We have suggested here the folly of a person 
bending his chief energies toward any success 
which is purely frivolous and temporary, and 



THE MAN" WITH A LOW AIM 249 

which can confer no lasting benefit. It conld be 
of no special permanent honor to a son of the judge 
of Israel that he could make a finer display on an 
ass colt than any other man in the nation. It was 
a fad, a thing to laugh at for an hour, and that was 
the end of it. You may see the same folly in 
Absalom, the favorite son of David, who came to 
such a contemptible end. When Absalom was a 
young fellow he devoted himself to his hair ; it was 
his highest ambition in his younger days to have 
the finest head of curls there was in the whole city, 
and he used to have his curls weighed every year, 
and the gossip of the town was often running on the 
weight of Absalom's curls. Absalom seems to have 
doted on his looks. He was determined not only to 
look pretty while he was alive, but after he was 
dead. And so while he was yet a young fellow he 
selected a picturesque spot and built him a tomb, 
and no doubt often pictured to himself what a gor- 
geous funeral there would be when he died. But 
the end of it all was that the very curls he had spent 
so much time on caught in the branches of a tree 
when he was escaping from the battlefield, and his 
stubborn mule ran out from under him and left 
him dangling there in the air waiting for Joab's 
spear, and his body was afterward flung into a 
trench and a heap of stones piled over it, as you 



250 THE GEEAT SINNEKS OF THE BIBLE 

miglit bury a dog. 'No man whose story is spoken 
of in Old Testament history could have made his 
mark more brilliantly for the good of his race than 
Absalom. But his aim was low from the very 
beginning. It was frivolous and temporary, and 
he was never willing to deny himself his own way 
for to-day that there might be a better and more 
glorious to-morrow. 

I see young men and young women every day 
who are making the same fatal blunder. You see 
young men making it financially. They get better 
salaries than their fathers did, who, by economy 
and industry and a determination to run their roots 
down in the land, denied themselves luxuries and 
saved their money, developing, in so doing, their 
business interests and ability until they became, 
and are to-day, the strong, reliable, well-to-do busi- 
ness men. But their sons and their nephews must 
begin where the old folks leave off. They spend as 
much for a suit of clothes as would have made the 
father respectable in his younger life for a year. 
They pamper their youth, that needs the discipline 
of self-denial in order to be its strongest, with lux- 
uries, narcotics, and stimulants, because down at 
the bottom of things the chief aim of life, to them, 
is that they may look well in their clothes, and eat, 
drink, and be merry. Like the sons of Abdon, they 



THE UA-N WITH A LOW AIM 251 

must make a great show when they mount their ass 
colts. Multitudes of men came to middle life and 
on to old age with no strength of business character, 
no influence in the business community, mere drift- 
logs of fate, because they have frittered and fooled 
away all their younger years on things that were 
purely temporary and could be of no value when 
attained. 

]^ow, if you will carry all this up to the higher 
realm, our illustration does not lose its value. For 
there the man who is wise is the one whose high 
aim is to so use his money and his social privileges 
and all the lesser ends of life that they shall be 
building up a character which shall shine through 
an immortal career. For, after all, a man may 
succeed in a business way and yet attain to no 
higher wisdom. A man may have sense enough to 
deny himself the present luxury that he may have 
the comforts of wealth in old age, and yet fail of 
that nobler wisdom that stores treasures up in the 
bank of heaven. There is many another man like 
the rich fool whom Jesus tells about, who in his 
prosperity proposed to build still greater barns to 
hold his goods, and then mocked his soul by saying, 
"Thou hast much goods laid up for many years." 
That man and all men like him are, like the sons 
of Abdon, only riders of ass colts that shall be soon 



262 THE GREAT SINI^EES OF THE BIBLE 

stripped of their trappings and left riderless, while 
the impoverished rider will hear the stinging judg- 
ment of God, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall 
be required of thee : then whose shall those things 
be, which thou hast provided ?" 

Wise men are always searching for something 
that will last. The manufacturers of paint in this 
country are just now searching the country for the 
man who painted a sign at a railway station in 
Harper's Ferry twenty-five years ago. The reason 
they want to find him is that he so wisely mixed 
his paint that, though a quarter of a century has 
passed by and the board has warped, the words he 
painted, "Harper's Ferry," stand out as clear and 
distinct as when the work was first done. There is 
no man on earth, who is known, who can do that 
to-day. And these manufacturers want to find the 
man who can mix paint so as to make it last. There 
is a fortune for him if he can be found. That is 
the great thread that runs through the universe; 
it is the difference between wisdom and folly al- 
ways. Deny yourself an hour that you may have 
a day. Deny yourself the day that you may have 
a week. Deny yourself in youth that you may 
have a glorious manhood. Refuse present dissi- 
pation that you may have long strength and power. 
This was what Moses did when he refused to be 



THE MAIS" WITH A LOW AIM 253 

called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing 
rather to suffer affliction with the people of God 
than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. He 
had his eye on the greater reward, and, with the 
Hebrew's keen insight, refused to be cheated out 
of his long career of usefulness and honor for the 
temporary pleasures in Egypt. 

You may see all this illustrated in the difference 
between Abraham and Lot. Lot had an eye on the 
present cattle market. Sodom might be wicked, 
but the cattle trade was good, and the pasture lands 
sloping that way were rich and well watered. He 
knew the danger to his OAvn character and to his 
children, but he could not deny himself the present 
success; he must ride his ass colt toward Sodom. 
Abraham turned his face toward the desert in 
peace, without a cloud on his brow; why? "He 
beheld a city which hath foundations, whose builder 
and maker is God." Lot lost his wealth and his 
home, and his family was disgraced and broken up. 
His failure from beginning to end was the failure 
of a low aim. Abraham was a success. His eyes 
were in the heavens. Wherever he went he built 
an altar unto God. Abraham had a longing for 
city life too, but he wanted a city that would en- 
dure. He would not put up with Sodom after he 

had caught a glimpse of the city in the skies. 
17 



254 THE GREAT SIl^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

Many of you who hear me ought to take this 
lesson home to your own hearts. The supreme aim 
of your life is too low and too frivolous, l^othing 
is high enough for you, nor for any man or woman, 
that does not take into its scope both worlds. To 
live a useful life here is to fit yourself for an hon- 
ored life there. 'No life that is not useful and 
helpful, that does not serve the highest ends, will 
give you any permanent peace even in this world. 
And whatever success you have in this world, if it 
is not of a kind that works in with God's purpose, 
and brings you into communion and fellowship 
with him, it is but folly, and will bring you to con- 
tempt in the end. 

A curious story comes from Madrid in explana- 
tion of the misfortunes which have afflicted the 
royal house of Spain. According to this supersti- 
tion, the root of the mischief is a fatal ring of quite 
medieval deadliness. The late King Alphonso 
XII gave it to his cousin Mercedes when he was 
betrothed to her, and she wore it during the whole 
of her short married life. On her death the king 
presented it to his grandmother, the Queen Chris- 
tina. She died very soon after, when it was passed 
along to the king's sister, who at once began to 
sicken and in a few days breathed her last. Al- 
phonso then handed it to his sister-in-law, but in 



THE MAJSr WITH A LOW AIM 256 

three months she also died. His majesty now re- 
solved to retain the fateful jewel in his own keep- 
ing, but he, too, soon fell a victim to its mysterious 
malignancy. By order of the widow it was sus- 
pended by a chain around the neck of the statue of 
the patron saint of Madrid. Alas ! all intelligent 
people know what the fatal ring is that has led 
Spain from one disaster to another through all 
these years. It has been the fatal lack of a high 
aim. She has sought to amuse her people instead 
of educating them. She has sought the present 
pleasure rather than the permanent good. She has 
riddon her ass colt generation after generation, 
while other great nations have been developing 
their citizens in all the arts of life, and in all the 
strength of morality and religion. The nation is 
dying of a low aim. Young men, see that you do 
not die the same death. The present pleasure, the 
appealing lust, the lurking passion, all these are 
present and full of temptation; but it is only by 
denying yourself every hurtful and evil thing, only 
by fixing your eye upon the highest and holiest 
prize that God sets before you, and pressing on- 
ward toward it with -untiring devotion, that you 
can make sure of glorious and eternal triumph, 
Emerson said, "If a man will but plant himself on 
his instincts, the great world will come round to 



256 THE GREAT SIJS^NEES OF THE BIBLE 

him." But Paul said it better when he cried, "For- 
getting those things which are behind, and reaching 
forth unto those things which are before, I press to- 
ward the mark for the prize of the high calling of 
God in Christ Jesus." 



A KING IN HIDING 257 



CHAPTEK XXII 

A King in Hiding 

And the Lord answered, Behold, he hath hid himself 
among the stuff.— i Samuel x, 22. 

It was the day for Saul's ordination as king, 
but he was timid about it, and, driven to a panic at 
last, he hid himself among the camp equipage, so 
that when the moment arrived to ordain a king the 
king could not be found. Then it was that the 
Lord made known unto them the whereabouts of 
the cowardly Saul. And they went and found the 
foolish fellow where he was hiding and brought 
him forth. It wouldn't have looked so absurd if he 
had been a little fellow, but he was a great, tall, 
splendid-looking man, head and shoulders higher 
than any other man in all the camp, and he must 
have looked and felt silly enough when they brought 
him out from his hiding place. He looked every 
inch a king when once he was brought forth and 
the crown was on his head, but he had hidden away 
among the pack saddles like some silly boy. 

I have recalled this picture for our study this 



258 THE GKEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

evening because it suggests the great truth that we 
are constantly in danger of losing the most impor- 
tant things in life by hiding them among "the 
stuff;" concealing them among things that are of 
little importance compared to what is hidden. A 
young man comes to the city to make his life career. 
He has been reared in an honest, wholesome, Chris- 
tian home ; he has in his veins the honorable blood 
of a good man and a good woman who have feared 
God and eschewed evil. The traditions of his 
family, no matter how poor it may be, are all hon- 
orable, straightforward, and noble. The son comes 
into the great market place of the city and offers 
his young and vigorous manhood in the exchange 
in search of fortune. He thrusts himself into the 
thick of life, works hard, early and late, struggles, 
and succeeds. Ten, fifteen, twenty years go by, 
and people point to him and say : "What a success 
he has made ! He came here with nothing and now 
he has a fortune." But I get closer to him and I 
begin to seek for the wholesome standard of honor 
which he brought to town with him years ago. I 
hunt for that genuineness and integrity with which 
he began his career ; that keen sense of right and 
wrong which once held him to a frank and manly 
course, and I cannot find it. Instead I find that 
he has compromised with the tricks and intrigues 



A KING IN HIDING 259 

and shady methods which men use who make haste 
to be rich. He has hidden his manhood among ^^the 
stuff ;" a joung king came to town, but he has been 
hidden and lost among the camp equipage. 

Another man gives himself up to pleasure. How 
to have a good time is the one query of every day. 
He becomes a mere plaything, a toy in social life. 
Anything that tickles his fancy, that gives him a 
new sensation, is his attraction. It may take a 
hundred ways of showing itself. He may be a flirt 
and develop into a silly butterfly given to soft dal- 
liance with equally silly women. He may develop 
into a dude and become simply a clothes-horse on 
which to show the changing fashions of the tailor. 
He may become theater-struck and give himself 
over to the imaginary tragedies and farces of the 
stage. It may be that the pleasures of the appetite 
attract him, and he turns toward the path of the 
glutton and the winebibber. Back at the first he 
only meant to have a good time and had no evil or 
malicious purpose in it. But the serious purpose 
to do honest work for God and man, to be of some 
real value to the world in which he lives, to make 
the best and noblest man out of himself, in order 
that the world may be a nobler and better place be- 
cause he has lived in it — all that he has hidden 
among "the stuff." There was a king in him; 



260 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

but search for the king now, and you will find 
him hidden away and lost in the mere furbelows 
and husks of life. 

What folly it is for men to hide the king in them 
among ^^the stuff !" For all these other things for 
which men hide their manhood are very transient 
and soon pass away. It is a remarkable fact that 
the most conspicuous examples of the men who 
have been preeminent in those characteristics that 
men count most to be desired have come to notably 
inglorious ends. Men struggle to attain strength, 
and are full of admiration for it ; and yet Samson, 
the strong man who could rend a lion in his hands, 
who could slay three thousand of the enemies of 
his country with a bludgeon in his naked hand, hid 
his strength amid the mere "stuff'' of folly and sin, 
and came to a miserable old age and a pitiful death. 
Absalom, who was famous as the most handsome 
man of his age, and whose beauty and brilliant 
qualities stole away the hearts of the people of a 
great city and nation, died the death of a dog. 
Ahithophel, the diplomat of Jerusalem in the bril- 
liant days of King David, hid his honor amid "the 
stuff" of timeserving and policy, and hanged him- 
self with his own hand. Alexander the Great made 
conquest of the earth, but died by poison at the 
end of a career which had mastered everything but 



A KII^G IN HIDING 261 

himself. He had made himself king of the world, 
but lost the inner kingdom of his own manhood. 
When men come to the end of life they find that 
everything is ^^stuff" except the quality of the man- 
hood itself. Then, if a man has traded off or 
covered up manhood for money or power or pleas- 
ure, he realizes how he has been cheated. All the 
things that men struggle for that are outward are 
but "stuff'' when the great emergencies of life 
come. 

In the reign of King Henry YI there is mention 
made of Henry Beaufort, a rich and wretched 
cardinal, who, lying on his death-bed and perceiv- 
ing his time to be but short, expostulated with him- 
self thus: "Wherefore should I die, being thus 
rich ? If the whole world were able to save my life, 
I am able either by policy to get it, or by riches to 
buy it. Pie, fie ! will not death be hired ? Will 
money and power do nothing ?" But he found that 
they could not do anything. Such is the impar- 
tiality of death that unlimited money will do noth- 
ing: there is no protection against the arrest of 
death. In such an hour how like "stuff" seems 
everything that has interfered with the develop- 
ment of the kingly qualities of the soul. 

There is a suggestion, I think, of great encour- 
agement in the statement here that it was the Lord 



262 THE aREAT SINl^ERS OF THE BIBLE 

who kept track of Saul, knew where he was hidden, 
and told them where to go and get him that they 
might bring him forth to his crowning. So, my 
brother, you that are hidden away among "the 
stuff," making a failure of the best things of life 
in the great kingly qualities of the soul, God has 
not forgotten you, he has not lost track of you, he 
has not lost his interest in you, he watches over you 
where you are hidden, and he inspires our hearts 
with courage and with sympathy to seek after you 
and bring you forth, if possible, to be crowned 
again as the son of God. 

And we who are seeking to save men must never 
forget that, however repulsive and discouraging the 
pile of "stuff" that may be heaped upon a sinful 
soul, there is a king in hiding there, and if we can 
but arouse the nobler self into action we may save 
him. 

Colonel Eichard Hinton relates a very interest- 
ing little story of how he was walking once in Bos- 
ton with Walt Whitman, the poet. It was at night, 
and as they passed along they saw a figure slouch- 
ing toward them as if half afraid. The poet threw 
a massive arm out, as if startled, when he caught 
the felloVs face in the shadows. "Why, Jack," 
he cried, and drew him close with a kiss on the 
forehead. The man was evidently "a hard case." 



A KIN^G IN HIDING 263 

His dress was disordered and his face haggard. 
Colonel Hinton instinctively drew away to a seat 
near by. Evidently in bitter trouble, the man al- 
most clung to the stalwart arm that was about his 
shoulder. Some money passed and words were 
whispered. Then he noticed the man straighten 
his figure as Whitman again kissed his forehead, 
and he walked away quickly, saying firmly as he 
didso, "Iwill, Walt, Iwilir 

They passed on. They did not talk about him 
that night, but the next morning the poet briefly 
said at breakfast that ^^Jack" was a Long Island 
boy whom he had known in his youth. Jack had 
been reckless, and was fleeing from officers who 
were after him for stabbing a companion in a 
drunken brawl. The wounded man was recover- 
ing. 

Years afterward Colonel Hinton was mustered 
out of the volunteer army and went to live in Wash- 
ington. Whitman was one of the noted personali- 
ties there and they renewed their friendship. One 
day, in the Department of Justice, where Whitman 
was records clerk, Hinton was sitting by his desk, 
when the poet looked up suddenly and handed him 
a faded tintype of a private soldier, and said, ^'Do 
you think you have ever seen that face ?" It was 
a shrewd, sharp visage, coarse but strong in outline, 



264 THE GEEAT SINNEBS OF THE BIBLE 

and with something of a hunted look in the eyes. 
He shook his head and the poet remarked : "That's 
Jack. Boston Common, you know. He was killed 
at Peach Orchard — a good soldier, too." It is 
Christ's assurance that there is the making of a 
good soldier for the great battle of life in any poor 
sinful man if he be only willing to surrender at the 
cross and enlist in the army of the Lord. Christ 
knows how to find the king hidden under all "the 
stuif" of sin and bring him out to a new chance. 

I fear that we often gather so much form and 
ceremony and outward show about our Christian 
churches and our Christian service that we lose 
sight of the great fact that the one thing for which 
all these things exist is to save lost men and women. 

Thirty years ago a business man in Peoria, HI., 
met a friend, William Reynolds, also a prominent 
business man in that city, and said to him, "Mr. 
Reynolds, how long have we known each other ?" 

"About fifteen years." 

"Do you believe that it is necessary for me to 
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ if I am to be 
saved?" 

"Yes." 

"Do you care whether or not I am saved ?" 

"Certainly." 

"Pardon my frankness; I do not want to hurt 



A KmQ m HIBIKG 265 

your feelings, but I do not believe that you care at 
all whether I am saved or lost." 

"What do you mean V^ 

"You are a professing Christian, an officer in the 
church. We have met frequently during the last 
fifteen years. I have heard you speak on many 
topics. We have had many conversations. I would 
have listened gladly to you if you had spoken to me 
on the subject of religion, and yet in fifteen years 
you have never said one word about my salvation. 
You have never tried to win my soul to Christ. I 
cannot believe that you care whether I am saved or 
lost." 

Mr. Eeynolds with shame confessed that he had 
neglected his opportunities, and then said to his 
friend, "What has wrought this change in you ?" 

"I was in Chicago yesterday, and when I started 
to come home a young man asked if he might share 
my seat. As soon as the train began to move, the 
conversation, started by him, ran something like 
this : Tleasant day.' ^Yes.' 'Good crops this year.' 
^es, pretty good.' 'We ought to be thankful to the 
Lord for sending good crops.' 'Yes, I suppose we 
should.' 'My friend, are you a Christian V 'Well, 
I have a high regard for religion. I think churches 
are a good thing in a community.' 'Are you a 
Christian V 'Well, I cannot say that I am, now that 



266 THE GEEAT SINKEKS OF THE BIBLE 

yon ask the direct question.' ^Do you think it wise 
for a thoughtful man to go on for years without 
giving thought to this subject V ^^o, honestly, I 
do not think it wise.' ^My friend, may I pray with 
you V ^Why, if we are ever where there is a good 
opportunity, and you desire to do so, I do not think 
I would object.' ^ There never will be a better 
opportunity than the present. Let us bow our 
heads here behind this car seat.' And with the 
train speeding through the suburbs of Chicago 
and across the prairie this man prayed for my sal- 
vation. I never saw a man so much in earnest. I 
know that he cared whether I was saved or lost. 
Just as he finished his prayer the brakeman called 
out the name of a station and my new-made friend 
was off. He had reached the door when it occurred 
to me that I did not even know who he was. I 
rushed after him and asked his name, and he re- 
plied, ^D. L. Moody.' I am going back to Chicago 
to find him and to have him show me the way of 
life." 

Before Mr. Reynolds left his friend that morn- 
ing he had led him to Christ, and then Mr. Rey- 
nolds said : ^^I am going to Chicago myself to find 
Mr. Moody. There is something wrong with my 
life." 

A gentleman who had heard of this incident was 



A KING IN HIDING 267 

on the Pacific coast years after that, and meeting a 
man from Peoria, 111., inquired of him, "Do you 
know William Eejnolds of your city ?" "I know 
him well/' "What is his business ?" "The people 
who know him best say that his business is to serve 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and that he packs pork to 
pay expenses." Mr. Reynolds himself had become 
a great soul saver, and he has given his life to pull 
into the light kings whom he has found hidden 
amid "the stuff" of sin and folly. 

I am sure there are some who hear me at this 
time who are in just such a case as Saul. God has 
called you to a noble manhood, or a holy woman- 
hood, but you have turned a deaf ear to the call, and 
have hidden yourself amid the trumpery of the 
world. I come as God's messenger to call you back 
to your high destiny. God has not forgotten you, 
Christ has died to redeem you, the Holy Spirit will 
comfort and inspire you. Christian friends will 
give you fellowship. Shake off the follies that have 
covered you and come forth with earnest purpose 
to fill the great and worthy place to which God has 
called you as his child. 



268 THE GEEAT SII*fKERS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The Difference Betweeit Self-conceit and 

Self-eespect 

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is 
more hope of a fool than of him— Proverbs xxvi, 12. 

Should such a man as I flee? And who is there, that, 
being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life? 
I will not go m.—Neliemiah vi, 11. 

Between self-conceit and self-respect there is in 
reality a great gulf fixed ; but the chasm is not al- 
ways discerned, and the two are often confused in 
the mind and are sometimes taken the one for the 
other. Paul undertakes to distinguish between 
them in a careful way in the twelfth chapter of his 
letter to the Romans, where he says, ^Tor I say, 
through the grace given unto me, to every man that 
is among you, not to think of himself more highly 
than he ought to think; but to think soberly, ac- 
cording as God hath dealt to every man the meas- 
ure of faith." And from that Paul sets out to show 
that we have, every one of us, our own rightful 
place to work in the world, and our own important 
work; that there is no reason for our envying 



SELF-COXCEIT AND SELF-EESPECT 269 

anybody else, and no cause for anyone to think of 
our place or talents with contempt. 

The fatal folly and sin of self-conceit lies in the 
fact that the conceited man expects to win on the 
principle of his own shrewdness or cunning or 
lucky star, instead of earning fairly and squarely 
his success by living a righteous life and giving an 
honest return in labor for the reward he expects. 
He thinks that somehow or other he is going to 
escape that great law of God which girdles the 
earth as completely as the law of gravitation, and 
which says, ^^God is not mocked : for whatsoever a 
man soweth, that shall he also reap." But the self- 
conceited man thinks that it is possible for him to 
cheat God, and, though he sow wild oats, reap a 
useful crop into the garner of old age. He will 
admit that other men have tried to do the same 
thing and come out bankrupt and impoverished in 
every way, but his self-conceit causes him to believe 
that he will be able to do what others have always 
failed to do — to live a life of sin and yet in some 
way obtain the wages of righteousness. "No wonder 
the wise man said of such an illogical and unrea- 
sonable creature, "Seest thou a man wise in his 
own conceit ? there is more hope of a fool than of 
him.'' 

In the great cities, where young men gathered 
18 



270 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

from all the little towns and villages throughout 
the country congregate by the thousand, self-conceit 
works its awful ravage of destruction. Here is a 
young man who has just come to town from his 
village home with a curiosity to see the sights, and 
with a large idea of his own ability to take care of 
himself under all circumstances. And he is able 
to take care of himself until he begins to thrust 
himself into the ways of folly. The bird is able to 
take care of itself so long as it keeps out of the trap, 
and the writer of Proverbs says that it is in vain to 
set a trap in the open sight of a bird; but a self- 
conceited man will see the trap set, and know that 
it is a trap in which other men are constantly being 
caught and plucked of everything of value, and yet 
will walk straight on to his destruction. This 
young man has heard about gambling houses in the 
city ; he has heard, of course, that they are danger- 
ous places, where it is the rule, and not the excep- 
tion for men to come to disgrace and sorrow. But 
he thinks that these young men that have been 
caught were not so sharp as he is, and so, like the 
green goose that he is, he goes into the gambling 
saloon. He has been warned against it by his 
father and mother, and by wise friends, and yet so 
enormous is his self-conceit that he goes into the 
trap to pit himself against an old, trained gambler 



SELF-CONCEIT AND SELF-RESPECT 271 

who is a match for five hundred such young men 
as he is. Anybody that has been behind the scene 
knows that with all his experience, with all his 
craft, with all his secret arrangements, with all his 
organized knavery, it is impossible for anybody 
from the outside to make head against him. As 
Mr. Beecher once said, a man may have some 
chance in a game of chance, but in gambling sa- 
loons chances are not allowed. A man who gambles 
for a living is nothing but an incarnate thief, a 
cunning thief, a perpetual thief — first, last, and all 
the time a thief — and his business is to steal. He 
has made stealing a profession, and is practiced in 
it. He is acquainted with men's dispositions, and 
knows how to take them. And here comes in this 
green young man. He is exactly like a little fly 
exploring a great big black-bellied spider's web, 
that says, "It does not look as though there 
was very much to be afraid of here; I do not 
see anything that I cannot manage; at any rate, 
I will try," and pitches in. And after he is 
once in — ^you hear one faint buzz, and that is the 
end of him. 

Here is another young fellow, with a little rotten 
spot of self-indulgence in him, who thinks that be- 
cause he is away from home, where his mother will 
not know and his sisters are not likely to hear about 



272 THE aBEAT SIKHERS OF THE BIBLE 

it, he can afford to glut his idle curiosity, or give 
vent to his evil passion in the dark places of the 
city that have held for him an unholy fascination. 
He has heard about other men being ruined there, 
but his overweening self-conceit bolsters him up, 
and makes him believe that he can go, and come 
out whole, where others have lost their manhood 
and their lives. And so he goes to the brothel, and 
is flattered and intoxicated by drugged wines and 
drugged pleasures, until the dart strikes through 
his liver. Poor fool, to think that he could handle 
pitch and not be defiled ! When it is too late he 
wakes up to know that God's word is true when it 
says, ^'The lips of a strange woman drop as an 
honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil," 
and that the other part of the warning is also true, 
that the end of her career is bitter as wormwood, 
and that "her feet go down to death, her steps take 
hold on hell." If the self -conceited and deluded 
youth who is beginning to go in that dark way could 
only have wisdom to see "the ghastly skeletons, the 
pallid cheeks, the leaden eyes, the rotting bones, 
the consuming marrow, the hideous outcome of 
such a life ! But ten thousand men perish because 
they deem themselves so smart; because they are 
confident that, however many may have perished, 
they are not going to perish." "Seest thou a man 



SELF-CONCEIT AND SELF-EESPECT 273 

wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a 
fool than of him." 

Here is another yonng man, brought np on the 
farm to drink cold water, and eat plain and simple 
food, and shnn strong drink. He has heard of the 
sting of the adder, of the danger of drunkenness, 
and all that ; but now that he is away from home 
influences he finds himself surrounded by people 
who sneer at those safe and quiet ways of life in 
which he has hitherto walked. And so he begins to 
reason that men have come to be drunkards because 
they were weak and had not much will power. The 
young man's self-conceit causes him to boast that 
he himself has an iron will and that he can always 
stop drinking when he wants to, and so he begins 
with the wine cup, and the taste grows until it be- 
comes his master and ruins him body and soul. 
Other men look on and see him ruined and walk 
straight into the trap themselves, with their eyes 
open, because their bloated self-conceit flatters 
them that they are a little stronger than he was. 
"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit ? there 
is more hope of a fool than of him." 

l^owj self-respect is a very different thing, ^ehe- 
miah, who uttered this second text, was a man 
who had genuine self-respect. ISTehemiah had had 
a good place in the palace of the king of Persia 



274: THE GREAT SII^KEES OF THE BIBLE 

and was a great favorite of the king. If he had 
been a selfish man he would have settled himself 
down there and feathered his own nest, and given 
himself no trouble about the sad condition of his 
native citj. But ^ehemiah was an unselfish and 
noble soul. It was impossible for him to be happy 
while, though living in a palace, he knew that his 
relatives and friends were in trouble and that the 
walls of his native city had been torn down. And 
so he betook himself to prayer, and prayed most 
earnestly that God would in some way open the way 
for him to help in bringing prosperity again to 
his people. The next day, when he came into the 
presence of the king, the monarch at once detected 
the sorrow that was mirrored in the sensitive face 
of the young man. He saw that some trouble was 
gnawing at his heart, and required of him an ex- 
planation. The king became interested in his story, 
and sent him away to restore the walls of Jerusalem 
and build up again the prosperity of his people. 
Nehemiah returned to a discouraged and disap- 
pointed people, but his own faith in God was so 
strong, and his own magnetic personality so irre- 
sistible, that he soon put new heart into them, and 
had them all at work rebuilding the broken wall. 
So great was his success that the enemies of his 
people saw that the Hebrews would soon be inde- 



SELF-CONCEIT AND SELF-RESPECT 275 

pendent of tliem unless Nehemiah could in some 
way be frightened from his great work. At first 
they wanted him to come and have a council with 
them, but ^N^ehemiah sent them word, saying, "I 
am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down : 
why should the work cease while I leave it and 
come down to you ?'' They tried four times to get 
him off with them into some sort of council where 
they would have a chance to fall upon him and kill 
him. But I^ehemiah steadfastly went on with his 
work. Then they undertook to scare him. They 
told him that there was a lot of evil gossip going 
about, to the effect that he was planning treach- 
ery and rebellion, thinking in this way to frighten 
the brave young leader and dishearten him in his 
work. They did not frighten him, but they did suc- 
ceed in alarming some of his friends, and one of 
them said to him, "Let us meet together in the house 
of God, within the temple, and let us shut the doors 
of the temple : for they will come to slay thee ; yea, 
in the night will they come to slay thee.'' "Should 
such a man as I flee f shouted ISTehemiah. "Who 
is there, that, being as I am, would go into the tem- 
ple to save his life ? I will not go in." It turned 
out that this was a false friend, who had been hired 
by I^ehemiah's enemies to entice him, if possible, 
to show cowardice by hiding in the temple. 



276 THE GREAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

l^ehemiah's self-respect was not founded on any 
self-conceit or any overgrown idea of his own 
strength or greatness. It was built on the solid 
rock of his belief that God had called him to do a 
great work, and that because of that his life was 
dear to God, and it was his place to go on doing the 
work given him, leaving himself in the Lord's 
hands. That is the foundation of all true self- 
respect. ISTo man can really respect himself unless 
he feels that he is doing right, that his life is justi- 
fied in God's sight, and that he is doing the noble 
work which God would have him do. To make a 
man feel that he is fulfilling his mission is to dig- 
nify him with a noble and royal self-respect. 

"Just where you stand in the conflict, 

There is your place! 
Just where you think you are useless 

Hide not your face! 
God placed you there for a purpose, 

Whate'er it be; 
Think he has chosen you for it; 

Work loyally. 

"Gird on your armor! Be faithful 

At toil or rest, 
Whiche'er it be, never doubting 

God's way is best. 
Out in the fight, or on picket, 

Stand firm and true; 
This is the work which your Master 

Gives you to do," 



SELF-COIJCEIT AND SELF-RESPECT 2Y7 

To give your heart to Christ and become a Chris- 
tian cannot help but give you a more wholesome 
self-respect. The fact that Christ loves you, that 
he has chosen you for his friend, and that he daily 
holds communion with your heart, will make you 
feel differently about yourself. 

A lady prominent in society in an eastern city 
wears a ring which has a very romantic history. 
It is an old-fashioned ring containing a lock of 
faded brown hair covered by a glass setting, 
l^early forty years ago the white-haired lady who 
now wears the ring cut that tress of hair from her 
own curls and gave it to a jeweler to be inclosed in 
a ring which she gave to her soldier lover when he 
was setting out for the war. It can be imagined 
how he prized this memento of the girl he loved. 
Through many a weary month, in many a sad 
scene, it remained on the finger on which she had 
placed it. One day, after one of the fierce battles 
of the Wilderness, the young officer was carried, 
wounded, to the field hospital. He was insensible, 
but the surgeons saw that there was life in him and 
thought it might be preserved by amputating his 
arm. There was no time to be lost and they cut 
through the sleeve, and, having done their work, 
set the limb away with the sleeve and gauntlet still 
on it. A friend was beside his bed when the young 



278 THE GEEAT SIN^ITEES OP THE BIBLE 

officer recovered his senses, and gently told him 
what had been done. His first thought was of his 
treasured ring ; it was dearer to him than the lost 
hand. His friend went and found the arm, re- 
moved the gauntlet and saw the ring, which he took 
back to the sufferer. It was put on the only hand 
he had left, and his mind was relieved. This is the 
ring that his wife now wears. To her it is endeared 
by the affection in which her husband held it for 
her sake. Its intrinsic value is probably small, but 
as the symbol of a love which manifested itself in 
that trying hour it is precious beyond price. It is 
such a love that gives Christ a claim on his follow- 
ers. "Having loved his own which were in the 
world, he loved them unto the end." 'No good 
woman could be loved like that by a noble man 
without an increased self-respect, without feeling 
dignified and ennobled by such love. So Christ 
ennobles and dignifies and glorifies us by the great 
love wherewith he loves us. 



CAUGHT IN HIS OWN TEAP 279 



CHAPTEE XXIV 

The Story of a Man Who Was Caught in His 
Own Trap 

So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had 
prepared for Mordecai.— £/s*7ier vii, 10. 

Haman furnishes a verj graphic illustration of 
the way sin, when yielded to, can take a man who 
is seemingly hedged about until he is impregnable 
to misfortune, and utterly destroy him. If Haman 
had been willing to let well enough alone, and live 
honestly and decently, he might have had a long 
and conspicuous career at the Persian court. He 
was a brilliant adventurer from the broken-down 
nation of the Amalekites and had captured the 
fancy of King Ahasuerus. The king was so greatly 
pleased with him that he honored him above all the 
other courtiers in his realm, and he came to be 
known as the power behind the throne in that king- 
dom. So great became his power and majesty that 
whenever he walked in the streets the proudest of 
the nobility bowed to him with as much reverence 
as if he were the king himself. Haman was a 



280 THE GREAT SII^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

proud man and a vain one, and nothing made him 
quite so happy as to have people bow to him in 
public. It thrilled him through and through with 
delight when some powerful noble did him princely 
honor before the eyes of the crowd. 

But there was one man in to^vn that didn't bow. 
He permitted the great Haman to go by without 
the slightest nodding of his stubborn head. This 
was Mordecai, a relative of Esther, the beautiful 
young queen. This stubbornness on the part of 
Mordecai was a source of the greatest chagrin and 
mortification to Haman. But Haman was proud, 
and thought Mordecai alone was scarcely big 
enough game for his gun. On learning that Mor- 
decai was a Jew, he concluded that he would not 
only rid himself of Mordecai, but would extermi- 
nate the Jews from the country. 

Haman was himself an exile because of the 
power of the Jewish people, and to get a chance to 
not only destroy Mordecai, but wreak vengeance on 
thousands of Jews throughout the empire, made his 
wicked little heart dance for joy. So the first time 
he had a good chance to talk with the king he told 
him that he had discovered a large number of peo- 
ple scattered throughout his empire who were dis- 
loyal to the government. They worshiped a strange 
God, and were especially disrespectful to King 



CAUGHT IN HIS OWN TEAP 281 

Ahasuerus himself. These people were wealthy 
people, and he, Haman, loved the king so tenderly 
that it just broke his heart to see these people, who 
were traitors to the king, fattening on the good 
things of his realm. If the king would only give 
him a chance, nothing would make him happier 
than to clear the kingdom of this vile race. 

Ahasuerus was a hot-headed sort of fellow, al- 
ways going off half primed, and he fell into the 
trap very neatly. He took his signet ring off his 
finger and gave it to Haman, and told him to work 
his will with them; though, as for enriching the 
public treasury from the spoils of these Jews who 
were to be murdered, Haman might keep all that 
himself. Haman went home walking on air. He 
lost no time in sending out the edict all over the 
kingdom that, from the palace to the hovel, it 
should be no crime to kill a Jew on certain days. 
This brought even Queen Esther into danger of 
her life. 

Mordecai lost no time in making the queen ac- 
quainted with this horrible plot of Haman's, and 
reverently assured her that it was no doubt provi- 
dential that she had come to her high place for such 
a time as this, and that not only the fate of her race 
and her relatives, but her own life depended on her 
immediate action. Esther was put in a hard place. 



THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

King Ahasuerus was not the most gentle husband 
in the world; he had deposed one queen because 
she would not come to the dining room when he and 
his lords were drunk, and he had made a strict rule 
that anybody, even the queen, who should come 
into his presence without being invited, unless he 
graciously held out the scepter, was to be punished 
with death. The king had not seemed to care about 
sending for her for a long time, and he might not 
think of her again until it was too late ; so she sent 
Mordecia word that, if he would call a prayer 
meeting among all their people on the outside, she 
would have a prayer meeting with her maids in the 
palace, and then on a certain day she would go to 
the king, whether she lived or died, and trust the 
result to God. There is romantic heroism in her 
words, "So will I go in unto the king, which is not 
according to the law : and if I perish, I perish." 

Well, it turned out all right. As Esther came in 
timidly, his majesty, happening to be in a good 
humor, held out the scepter to her with gracious 
pleasure, and wanted to know her desires. Esthei 
had the matter all arranged in her mind. She 
knew the king's weak spot. He was very fond of 
a good dinner, and greatly delighted in Haman's 
conversation and society ; so she expressed her de- 
sire that the king and his friend Haman should 



CAUGHT IN HIS OWN TEAP 283 

come that day to a banquet which she had prepared. 
This pleased the king, and he sent word to Haman 
to hurry up and come to the feast. 

When the king was mellow with his wine after 
dinner, he again asked the queen what was at the 
bottom of all this. Man like, he couldn't get it out 
of his head that Esther wanted something out of 
the ordinary, to cause her to get him up such an 
unusually fine dinner. And the queen replied that 
if she had found favor in the sight of the king, she 
would like to have him come to a banquet again 
to-morrow, and let Haman come also, and then she 
would make known her request. 

There was, no doubt, method in Esther's delay. 
She had found out that it was a good thing to 
pique the king's curiosity. By her making so much 
of it he would gradually get his mind made up to 
yield to a large request. The king gladly granted 
her petition, and Haman went out bubbling over 
with vanity and happiness. But as he went down 
the steps of the palace he saw something that ironed 
all the smiles out of his face. There was Mordecai, 
with a neck as stiff as if it had an iron ramrod in it, 
and he never bowed or paid the slightest reverence 
to him. Haman wanted to choke him, but he 
clinched his fists and went on in silence. 

That was a notable night in Haman's house. 



284 THE GREAT SINKERS OF THE BIBLE 

Everything seemed to be going his way. He sent 
out for all his friends to come in, and he had a great 
time boasting to them about how rich he was and 
what a nice lot of children he had, how smart his 
boys were and how beautiful his girls, and what 
great honor the king had bestowed upon him. And 
now, he says, Queen Esther has taken as great a 
fancy to me as the king, and I was the only man 
invited to her banquet to-day with the king, and as 
a special mark of favor I am to be at a banquet 
again to-morrow with the king alone. And then 
Haman made a wry face : "Yet all this availeth me 
nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting 
at the king's gate.'' Poor Haman, he was one bow 
short, and that one old stiff-necked Jew was the fly 
in the ointment which robbed him of all his pleas- 
ure. But his wife and his friends advised him not 
to worry about Mordecai. "Let a gallows be made 
of fifty cubits high," they said, "and to-morrow 
speak thou unto the king that Mordecai may be 
hanged thereon." That pleased Haman, and he 
ordered the gallows built. 

Just here an interesting thing happened in the 
palace. Ahasuerus was troubled with insomnia, 
and that very night he could not sleep. He had hit 
upon the ingenious plan of having himself read to 
sleep, and he found that nothing would work so 



CAUGHT IK HIS OWN TEA? ^85 

well as having his own writings read to him. I 
never tried it, but I have heard of preachers having 
their o^vn sermons read to them on such occasions 
with great profit. Well, this night the king had 
one of his servants reading to him out of his diary. 
And, reading along, they came to the place which 
told how Mordecai had once discovered a plot 
against the king's life and by loyally making it 
known had saved him. The king immediately 
inquired, ^^Has any honor ever been paid to Morde- 
cai for that kindness ?" And he found that nothing 
had been done. He felt very much ashamed about 
it, and had it still on his mind when the courtiers 
began to gather in the outer room the next morn- 
ing. He turned to his steward and said, "Who is 
in the court ?" Now Haman was there, an early 
comer, in order to ask the privilege of hanging 
Mordecai. But the moment he was admitted, be- 
fore he got a chance to speak, the king turned and 
said, "Haman, is that you ? I am glad to see you ; 
T was just wanting your advice about a case. What 
shall be done unto the man whom the king delight- 
eth to honor V 

Haman very naturally supposed that he was the 
man that was to receive this honor, so he fixed the 
thing up in great shape, with this idea as the basis 

of his proceedings. He advised that the royal 
19 



THE GREAT SIN'NERS OF THE BIBLE 

apparel be brought, and the king's horse, and the 
crown royal for his head; and counseled that the 
man be appareled by the noblest princes of the 
realm as his servants, and that one of these princes 
lead the horse through the streets with this favored 
man on its back, and let it be shouted everywhere, 
"Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king 
delighteth to honor." 

"All right," said the king; "that will do. 
Haman, you go and treat Mordecai that way." 
Can you imagine a bitterer thing than that? If 
there was ever poetic justice done on earth it was 
done then. There are some historic scenes that I 
should like to have witnessed, and one of them 
would be the dressing of Mordecai by Haman. But 
all things pass, and the bitter hour was over, and 
Haman went home crestfallen and broken-hearted 
to tell his wife and his friends the horrible shame 
that had fallen on him. His wife and friends were 
evidently very much alarmed themselves, and were 
very poor comforters, for they prophesied that this 
was probably the beginning of the end. But while 
they were talking, one of the king's chamberlains 
came to hurry him away to the banquet. Poor 
Haman went, with a heart like lead, because he had 
to. It was not appetite that dragged him thither. 

As the second banquet drew near its close the 



CAUGHT IN HIS OWN TEAP 28Y 

king again inquired of Esther her petition, and 
then she told him that her relatives and friends, as 
well as her own life, had been plotted against, and 
were in immediate danger. The king, aroused and 
angry, said, "Who is he, and where is he^ that durst 
presume in his heart to do so ?" Then I can im- 
agine Esther leaping to her feet from the banquet, 
and pointing the accusing finger at the shrinking, 
trembling scoundrel shaking like a man with the 
palsy at the table, as she shouts, "The adversary 
and enemy is this wicked Haman." One of the 
servants threw a cloth over Haman's head, hiding 
his face from the king's anger, and Harbonah, the 
chamberlain who had been at Haman's house to 
hurry him to the banquet, and who had seen the 
peculiar preparations that had been made there, 
said, "Haman has a gallows fifty cubits high, which 
he made for Mordecai, the king's friend, standing 
in his house." Then said the king, "Hang him 
thereon." And so the gallows which Haman had 
built for Mordecai was all ready for himself. 

The sermon has preached itself as the story has 
gone on, and there remains little for me to say. 
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
The man who goes through the world full of hatred 
and vengeance, building a gallows for the man he 
hates, is only preparing for his own disaster. 



288 THE GREAT SIl^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

"With what measure ye mete it shall be measured 
unto you again." The man who is full of forgive- 
ness and kindness and love toward his fellow-men 
sows the seeds of all that is gracious and beautiful, 
that shall make fragrance to bless the path of his 
declining years. He who goes through the world 
with bitterness and meanness is sowing dragons' 
teeth that will be a hard pillow to lie on when he is 
old. Wickedness may succeed for a while, but 
every iniquitous plot has within it the elements of 
its own disintegration. Kighteousness that will 
not bow its head to a sin because it is successful or 
popular may be threatened and plotted against, 
and for a time clouded with defeat, but in the end 
its enemies hang on the gallows they have built 
for it. 



THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL 289 



CHAPTER XXV 

The Handweiting on the Wall 

Then the king's countenance was changed, and his 
thoughts troubled him.— Daniel v, 6. 

Then was Daniel brought in before the king.— Daniel 
V, 13. 

The theme we are to study is one that has been 
used by artist and poet and orator for hundreds of 
years. It is one of those strong and splendid pic- 
tures so replete with instruction, of such universal 
application, that its teaching is as valuable in one 
age as in another and finds something that echoes 
back a response in every human breast. 

I have brought these two Scriptures together in 
this contrast in order to suggest the striking dif- 
ference that exists between a man who depends for 
his power on his own inherent personality and a 
man who is dependent entirely upon the position 
which he holds or the circumstances which sur- 
round him. A few hours before this scene is 
opened, Belshazzar would have seemed to be by far 
the most splendid and important personage in all 
Babylon 5 he was king over a rich and powerful 



290 THE GREAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

nation, which had in Babylon the most magnifi- 
cent capital in the world. Compared to him, Daniel 
was small indeed. But a few hours pass by, and a 
great emergency arrives which calls not for posi- 
tion or office, but for manhood; and in that hour 
Belshazzar shrinks and shrivels, and Daniel looms 
up large. So it will ever be on the great occasions 
of life. Office, wealth, fame — these are only the 
scabbards; manhood is the sword, which is infi- 
nitely more important. 

A good deal of comment has been made con- 
cerning the sword presented recently to Commo- 
dore Schley by the people of Philadelphia. The 
sword cost several thousand dollars, and by far the 
greater part of this money was spent on the jewels 
and decorations on the scabbard. This fact has 
revived a story told of General Winfield Scott 
many years ago, who had received a beautiful 
sword from the State of Louisiana and was asked 
how it pleased him. 

"It is a very fine sword, indeed," he said, "but 
there is one thing about it I should have preferred 
different. The inscription should be on the blade, 
not on the scabbard. The scabbard may be taken 
from us; the sword never." 

An eastern editor, reflecting on this incident, 
brings out very pertinently the great fact that the 



THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL 291 

world spends too mucli time, money, and energy 
on the scabbard of life; too little on the sword. 
The scabbard represents outside show, vanity, and 
display ; the sword, intrinsic worth. The scabbard 
is ever the semblance ; the sword is the reality. The 
scabbard is the temporal ; the sword is the eternal. 
The scabbard is the body; the sword is the soul. 
The scabbard represents the material side of life ; 
the sword represents the true, the spiritual, the 
ideal. 

E^ow, Belshazzar had a very much more brilliant 
scabbard than Daniel, but when it came to the 
sword of real manhood the young man from Jewry 
outclassed him entirely. Belshazzar had the title 
of king, but Daniel was far more like a king as they 
stood there facing each other in that time of peril 
and alarm. 

Let us keep our story and our sermon together 
as we go along. We have here the story of that 
evolution which goes on, in a sinful life, just as 
surely in a bookkeeper or a trolley car conductor 
or a drug clerk as it does in a king. The first step 
in most downward careers is the step of dissipa- 
tion or wastefulness of the forces of life. If you 
will think over most of the men and women you 
have known who have come to moral disaster, you 
will find that this is correct. ]^ot always the same 



292 THE GREAT SIN^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

kind of dissipation, but a failure to hold one's self 
keenly responsible to God for the careful and noble 
use of the talents committed to us. The storj we 
have in hand is like that. Belshazzar, the king of 
Babylon, went the way of dissipation. We have 
not seen all the steps that come up to this climax. 
We see him after he is ripe in wickedness. He 
has gone the path of the drunkard. He talked the 
language of those modern silly fools who say, "A 
short life and a merry one, for we will be a long 
time dead." Dissipation has bred in him, as it does 
in men and women everywhere, irreverence and 
recklessness. Ten years before Belshazzar never 
would have dreamed of the blasphemy and reckless 
conduct of this hour which is portrayed to us. But 
sin must, in the very nature of things, grow more 
reckless and wicked as the time goes on. So there 
came a day when Belshazzar determined to make 
a feast such as Babylon never saw ; one that should 
be talked of for many years to come. Alas! he 
little dreamed how long it would be talked of and 
what an immortality of ignominy it would give 
him. And so, "Belshazzar the king made a great 
feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine 
before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted 
the wine, commanded to bring the golden and sil- 
ver vessels which his father J^ebuchadnezzar had 



THE HANDWEITING ON THE WALL 293 

taken out of the temple whicli was in Jerusalem; 
that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his 
concubines, might drink therein. Then they 
brought the golden vessels that were taken out of 
the temple of the house of God which was at Jeru- 
salem ; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and 
his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine, 
and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, 
of iron, of wood, and of stone." 

It was a brilliant scene of revelry and drunken- 
ness. All hearts were full of gayety; fears were 
thrust aside; reason and conscience were crushed 
under foot; and yet judgment waited on that 
wicked throng. Belshazzar might be rich and 
powerful, but he could not measure arms with God. 
In the midst of the revelry, ^^in the same hour came 
forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over 
against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall 
of the king's palace : and the king saw the part of 
the hand that wrote. Then the king's countenance 
was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that 
the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees 
smote one against another." 

Often it is true that the most reckless man in 
sin is the greatest coward when his sin overtakes 
him in judgment. What a pitiful spectacle Bel- 
shazzar is as he stands there staring at the ominous 



294 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

sentence on the wall, with his knees smiting to- 
gether, his hands trembling, and his teeth chatter- 
ing, like a man with the ague. Where is all his 
bravado now ? Where is all his blasphemous reck- 
lessness ? It is gone like froth, and the bitter dregs 
at the bottom of the cup remain to be swallowed 
to the very last. Pride and recklessness are poor 
foundations to build on ; they will not stand when 
the storm comes. When the rain of affliction and 
death beats upon such a house it falls, because it 
is built upon the sand. Kings may come and go in 
Babylon, but Daniel abides, for his character is 
built upon the solid rock. How is it with you? 
Can you stand the storm, or not ? Only the rever- 
ent soul, living in humble fellowship with God, 
can have composure in the day of reckoning. 

There is something suggestive in the fact that 
it was not in the first hour of his fright that Bel- 
shazzar was wise enough to turn to Daniel. ITo; 
the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers 
— every humbug of a fortune-teller in Babylon — 
all had their turn before he was wise enough to go 
to the man of God. Finally the queen sent to him 
and reminded him of the presence of Daniel in the 
city. She said, "There is a man in thy kingdom, 
in whom is the spirit of the holy gods ; and in the 
days of thy father light and understanding and 



THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL 295 

wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in 
him." So Daniel was called, and it was found that 
the wisdom which cometh from God still abode in 
that noble man. 

How many men overtaken by their sin, in our 
own day, turn everywhere for relief before they 
turn to Christ and the house of God. A man tries 
to drown his grief in drink, or forget his sorrow in 
cards, or lose his restlessness in speculation — only 
to sink himself the deeper in his misery — ^before 
he turns with humble heart to confess his sin and 
find forgiveness at the mercy-seat. 

It is a very sad note which I am compelled to 
strike in conclusion: that one may go too far on 
the path of sin, and call when it is too late. The 
day of probation had passed for Belshazzar ; judg- 
ment had overtaken him. The handwriting on 
the wall was not a warning ; it was a sentence. The 
warning had been coming again and again, but he 
would not heed it. Daniel said to him: "O thou 
king, the most high God gave ^Nebuchadnezzar thy 
father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and 
honor: and for the majesty that he gave him, all 
people, nations, and languages, trembled and 
feared before him: whom he would he slew; and 
whom he would he kept alive ; and whom he would 
he set up ; and whom he would he put down. But 



296 THE GEEAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

when his heart was lifted up, and his jnind hard- 
ened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly 
throne, and they took his glory from him : and he 
was driven from the sons of men; and his heart 
was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was 
with the wild asses : they fed him with grass like 
oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven ; 
till he knew that the most high God ruled in the 
kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it 
whomsoever he will. And thou his son, O Bel- 
shazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou 
knewest all this ; but hast lifted up thyself against 
the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the 
vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy 
lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk 
wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of 
silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, 
which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God 
in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy 
ways, hast thou not glorified: then was the part 
of the hand sent from him ; and this writing was 
written. . . . God hath numbered thy king- 
dom, and finished it. . . . Thou art weighed 
in the balances, and art found wanting. , . . 
Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes 
and Persians." And that night Belshazzar was 
slain. 



THE HANDWEITIITG ON THE WAI.L 29Y 

I bring this solemn message to you to-night, glad 
in my heart to know that yon who hear me are still 
in the day of probation and warning; that if you 
will you may hearken unto God, and by turning 
from your sins to Christ may find forgiveness and 
eternal life. Hear his message to-night, and be 
saved ! 



298 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTER XXVI 

The Valley of Decision 

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the 
day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.—Joei 
iii, 14. 

I DO not care to enter into a discussion of the 
prophecy of this book, or to inquire into the re- 
lation of the text to its setting. It is the simple 
statement of fact that there are multitudes of peo- 
ple who are in the place where they must decide 
one way or the other, and where the judgment of 
God will follow fast upon their decision, to which 
I wish to call your attention. 

There is nothing so important as a decision. 
To choose while one has the power to choose, rather 
than to drift with the current until the power of 
choice is taken away, is one of the important char- 
acteristics of a strong and noble manhood or 
womanhood. Things are so arranged that when 
we will not decide for ourselves a decision is made 
for us, and it is ever against us. A boy passing 
through the years of his youth has the power to 
choose, oftentimes, whether he will have a good 



THE VALLEY OF DECISION 

education or not. But if he delays, and does not 
decide, the years soon tell the tale and the power 
to choose is taken from him; the time has passed 
by when school days are possible for him. We are 
assured that life is like that in other things. We 
have the opportunity now to choose Jesus Christ 
as our Saviour, to choose the Christian character 
as our own, to choose the Christian life as our 
career; but life is steadily passing on, and if we 
do not choose Christ it will not be long before the 
opportunity will have passed by forever, and our 
decision will be registered against him. 

To-night I offer you Jesus Christ as your 
Saviour. You have the power, by God's grace, to 
accept him to-night and to begin this very hour 
to lead a Christian life. If you do not accept him 
definitely, and obey him by an open confession, 
then you reject him. There cannot be any neu- 
trality in this matter, for Christ asks for your open 
friendship. He declares that the man that is not 
with him is against him. If you accept him to- 
night you enlist under his banner. The white flag 
of the cross becomes your flag. The white life of 
Christ becomes your life. You have put yourself 
with his friends and you have the promise of his 
friendship and guidance. Will you decide for him 
to-night ? God says to us, in his word, "I have set 



300 THE GBKAT SINKERS OF THE BIBLE 

before you life and death ;" he entreats us in every 
conceivable way to choose life, and you will choose 
one or the other by your own action. You say, "I 
do not choose.'' But your very conduct is a re- 
jection of Jesus unless you accept him. As Dr. 
Cuyler says, people do not usually set success and 
happiness on the one hand, and ruin on the other 
hand, and then willfully choose to be ruined, ^o 
man voluntarily chooses the disease, disgrace, and 
horrors of drunkenness. Yet thousands do choose 
to tamper with the seductive, intoxicating glass, and 
their own free choice brings them to the drunkard's 
self -damnation. In like manner, when you decide 
to refuse the loving Saviour who is knocking at the 
door of your heart, you choose to risk the conse- 
quences. When you choose to continue on in sin, 
to follow the devices and desires of an unconverted 
heart, and to refuse to be all that Christ would 
make you, you are deliberately choosing the path 
that separates you from Christ and heaven. 

]N"o man can serve two masters. You cannot go 
toward Chicago and toward Buffalo from Cleve- 
land at the same time. Every day you spend away 
from Christ you are getting farther from the Chris- 
tian life, and the harder it will be for you to become 
a strong and happy Christian. 

It is not more meditation, more thinking, more 



THE VALLEY OF DECISIOISr 301 

theorizing, that you need ; it is more decision. Dr. 
Newman Hall, the great English preacher, relates 
in his autobiography two very interesting incidents 
showing how people came to a decision at unex- 
pected times and were saved. One was when he 
undertook to climb Mount Snowdon. He slept on 
a plank in a wretched little hut on the mountain- 
top. A large number of workingmen, quarrymen, 
were also waiting to see the sun rise in the morning. 
It was the most beautiful sunrise he ever saw. 'No 
words could describe the reddening sky, the first 
level rays goldening a hundred peaks, the shadow 
of the mountain they were on creeping over the 
lakes and valleys below. There were about one 
hundred Welshmen and a dozen Englishmen on the 
mountain with him. They asked him to speak to 
them — some one recognizing who he was — ^but he 
replied that God was preaching to them and they 
had better hear his voice. But he offered prayer, 
and when he closed he noticed that several men 
were shedding tears. A year afterward he was 
taking a walking trip through that same country 
when a man pulled up the cart he was driving, con- 
taining cheeses and a live pig, and asked if he 
might give him a lift. Dr. Hall felt that it was a 
good opportunity for conversation. The country- 
man had reco2;nized him, and, speaking of that 
20 



302 THE GREAT SINI^EES OF THE BIBLE 

sunrise, said it resulted in the conversion of fifty 
people. Dr. Hall said that lie had onlj offered 
prayer. But the man replied that some had de- 
cided for Christ that morning, though they had not 
understood a word he said, they being Welsh, but 
the effect of their conversion was a revival in the 
village churches near. 

The other story is of a very different circum- 
stance. One Sunday evening, in his own church, 
Dr. Hall was delivering a written sermon on temp- 
tation, and suddenly felt that his address was un- 
like his usual style, and too argumentative for many 
of the people. He suddenly paused, looked away 
from his manuscript, and, appealing with a loud 
voice to the more distant of his audience, said: 
^Terhaps among those pressing in at the door there 
may be some one so miserable as to think of throw- 
ing himself over yonder bridge, saying, perhaps, 
'It's too late to tell me not to enter into temptation. 
I have done it ; I am in it. There's no hope for me.' 
Stop! Stop! There is hope. Christ died for 
thee. He will pardon, he will save, even thee!" 
A few weeks afterward one of the members of his 
church told him that he had called to see a woman 
who had made up her mind to throw herself over 
Blackfriars Bridge, one Sunday evening, but she 
thought it was too light and a policeman might 



THE VALLEY OF DECISION 303 

stop her; so in order to wait for the darkness she 
went into the church and stood in the crowd inside 
the door. Standing there it seemed to her that Dr. 
Hall had called directly to her to stop, and come 
to Christ, and she went back to her home to pray, 
and became a true and happy Christian. 

What saved these people was that, though the 
call of salvation came unexpectedly and in an 
unusual way, they at once decided and accepted 
Christ as their Saviour. In their immediate de- 
cision was their salvation. I wish I knew what I 
might say to win everyone here to-night to the 
safe refuge under the shadow of the cross of Jesus 
Christ. 

A young traveler, who was making a pedestrian 
tour through the Alps, tells a beautiful story of 
Swiss honesty. The Swiss friend who was with the 
foreign sightseers, observing that they were weary 
after a six hours' march from the Monastery of 
St. Bernard, said, "We shall soon reach my 
brother's house, and you shall all have a cup of hot 
coffee and some food." But when they reached 
the farmhouse it was closed — doors locked, shutters 
shut — and the whole place deserted, for it was the 
time of vintage and everyone was in the vineyard. 
Our young traveler was much disappointed, but 
the good Swiss friend said, "You will get your 



304 THE GEEAT SIl^NERS OF THE BIBLE 

refreshment just the same." And reaching up to- 
ward a cross made of gay mountain flowers which 
hung on the door, according to the pretty Yalais 
custom, he pulled down a great doorkey, and in 
another minute the door was open. A blazing fire 
of logs was quickly kindled, and in a short time 
they were refreshed with food and drink. All this 
seemed so strange to the tourists that they made 
inquiry as to how people would dare go away and 
leave the key in such a convenient place. "O," 
said the Swiss, in quite a shocked tone, "there's no 
fear of any of our people entering a house which 
does not belong to them. If the key is put under 
the cross it is always safe there." 

But the key under the cross on a Swiss door is 
not so safe as your soul will be, both in time and in 
eternity, if you put it under the shadow of Christ's 
cross, by choosing him this day as your Saviour 
and Lord. 'No one can pluck us out of that refuge. 



THE VILLAIN IN THE CHRISTMAS DEAMA 305 



CHAPTER XXVII 

The Villain in the First Christmas Drama 

Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.— 
Matthew ii, 13. 

Herod is preeminently the villain in the plot 
of the first Christmas story which has fascinated 
the heart of mankind for so many hundreds of 
years. All the others that appear in the story are 
most attractive characters. The wise men whq^ 
come from across the desert following the star in 
the East, bringing their rich gifts and ready to 
worship the Christ, are altogether winning and 
splendid in their suggestion of nobility and large- 
ness of character and life. The shepherds out in '' 
the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night, 
who, when they have heard the good news, come 
into the little tovm of Bethlehem full of curiosity 
and reverent awe, and who go back again to their 
flocks to praise God, win our hearts by their hon- 
esty and simplicity. The angels who bore the good 
tidings of peace and good will, and all that mighty 
company of the heavenly host which sang their 



306 THE GREAT SINITERS OF THE BIBLE 

praises to God and their anthems to the newborn 
Christ, have made all human life richer and 
sweeter ever since hj the glimpse they gave into 
the beauty and glory of the inhabitants of the up- 
per skies. They have filled the background of all 
our lives with singing angels, and put a prophecy 
of peace and brotherhood on human lips wherever 
the story of the Christ has gone. The little manger 
itself and the stable and the cattle have captured 
the fancy of the world. And pure-minded, honest 
Joseph, and sweet-faced, glory-crowned Mary, with 
the holy glow of motherhood resting on her inno- 
cent face as she kisses the newborn child — all these 
are attractive. There is only one villain in the 
plot, and that is Herod. 

Herod desired to slay Jesus because he feared 
the overthrow of his government. He had no idea 
of a spiritual kingdom, and there was no basework 
in the man for such a belief. He was a brutal, sen- 
sual, wicked man, to whom only brute force ap- 
pealed, and he supposed that this new Messiah, 
prophesied about, and whom the wise men of the 
East had come so far to seek, was the birth of a 
new kingdom which was to be a threat against his 
temporal power. The Herods, all of them, knew 
the truth of the proverb, ^^Uneasy lies the head 
that wears a crown." This Herod, like the rest, 



THE VILLAIiq- IIT THE CHEISTMAS DEAMA 307 

was all the time looking for danger, and so he was 
determined to crush it out while the promised king 
was only a child. When the wise men were led of 
God to return to their home without seeing Herod, 
he determined to make sure of his wicked purpose 
by killing every child under two years old in the 
entire region. This cruel edict was carried out, 
and the land was filled with broken-hearted fathers 
and mothers, and with the graves of little children. 
But the child he sought escaped his malice. 

I have not selected this picture for our study 
with the intention of taking the time for a dis- 
cussion of the sins of Herod, who has long since 
gone to his judgment; but to try to bring clearly 
before your mind the fact that Satan and sin are 
ever trying to destroy the Christ in our time as 
persistently and wickedly as in the days of Herod. 
All that is wicked in the world is warring against 
Jesus, and is seeking to take him out of the heart 
and lives of men. You who are Christians could 
bear testimony to the truth of this. You know that 
to maintain a Christian life and to keep a happy 
communion with Jesus in your soul require that 
you shall war against the world and the flesh and 
the devil. 

And you who have never become Christians, but 
who were reared in Christian homes and were 



308 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

brought up to look forward to Christmas as a 
time of love and good will, will bear witness as 
to how persistently the evil spirit has wrought in 
his attempt to destroy entirely that old spirit of 
love and reverence toward Christ and his Church 
which you knew something about in your child- 
hood. It may be that I speak to some out of whom 
the Christ-thought and the Christ-life have almost 
entirely disappeared. The memory of the prayers 
that were taught you in boyhood or girlhood is like 
a shadowy dream that has no longer any power to 
influence your daily conduct. Even the habit of 
churchgoing has ceased to be anything more than 
an empty form. Its true function in bringing you 
into relation to Christ, which had something real 
and genuine in blessing in your youth, has now 
vanished. Your indifference or your sinfulness 
has driven Christ out of your life. Other things 
have come in and filled your thought and affection 
until, like the little inn in Bethlehem on the first 
Christmas eve, there is no room for Christ in your 
soul. If this is so, you have met with the most 
terrible loss that can come to any human life. 

Henry Van Dyke, who has given us a number of 
supremely beautiful Christmas stories, has given 
one of rare interest this year, in which he tells the 
story of the "Lost Word.'' It is the story of a 



THE VILLAIN" IN" THE CHEISTMAS DEAMA 309 

joTing man who lived in Antiocli some fifteen hun- 
dred years ago. This young man was the son of 
Demetrius, a very proud and wealthy old pagan. 
The son, however, came under the influence of the 
great Christian preacher, John of Antioch, and 
though it cost him his father's home and all the 
prospects of wealth and power as his father's son, 
he accepted Christ and for two years lived with 
the Christians. But he fell, at last, into a gloomy 
mood, and lost the sweetness and joy out of his 
Christian faith. While he was in this depressc^d 
and unhappy condition Christmas morning came, 
and having no joy with the Christians in their fes- 
tivities, Hermas wandered away by himself to the 
Grove of Daphne, in which there was a heathen 
temple. He sat down beside a gushing spring and 
gave himself up to gloom and sadness. While he 
sat there, feeling that his Christian life was a 
failure, an old pagan priest came upon him, and 
tempted him to renounce Christ. Although he 
refused to do that, he opened his heart to the 
old priest and admitted his longing for worldly 
pleasure. 

"Well," said the old man soothingly, as he 
plucked a leaf from the laurel tree above them, 
and dipped it in the spring, "let us dismiss the rid- 
dles of belief. I like them as little as you do. You 



310 THE GEEAT SIITNEES OF THE BIBLE 

know this is a Castalian fountain. The Emperor 
Hadrian once read his fortune here from a leaf 
dipped in the water. Let us see what this leaf tells 
us. It is already turning yellow. How do you 
read that?" 

^^Wealth," said Hermas, laughing as he looked 
at his mean garment. 

"And here is a bud on the stem that seems to be 
swelling. What is that?" 

"Pleasure/' answered Hermas bitterly. 

"And here is a tracing of wreaths upon the sur* 
face. What do you make of that ?" 

"What you will," said Hermas, not even looking. 
"Suppose we say success and fame." 

"Yes," said the tempting priest ; "it is all writ- 
ten here. I promise that you shall enjoy it all. 
This is the season that you Christians call the 
Christmas, and you have taken up the pagan cus- 
tom of exchanging gifts. Well, if I give to you, 
you must give to me. It is a small thing, and really 
the thing you can best afford to part with : a single 
word — the name of Him you profess to worship. 
Let me take that word and all that belongs to it 
entirely out of your life, so that you shall never 
need to hear or speak it again. You will be richer 
without it. I promise you everything, and this 
is all I ask in return. Do you consent V^ 



THE VILLAIN IN THE CHEISTMAS DEAMA 311 

"Yes, I consent," said Hermas, mocking. "If 
jou can take your price, a word, you can keep your 
promise, a dream." 

The old priest laid the long, cool, wet leaf softly 
across the young man's eyes, and an icicle of pain 
darted through them ; every nerve in his body was 
drawn together there in a knot of agony. Then all 
the tangle of pain seemed to be lifted out of him, 
and he fell into a deep sleep. 

When Hermas awoke he had gone back again 
to his worldly life. He left the grove and walked 
toward his father's house. As he drew near he 
saw a confusion of servants in the porch, and the 
old steward ran down to meet him at the gate, say- 
ing, "The master is at point of death, and has sent 
for you." 

Hermas hurried to his father's side and found 
him dying. The feeble old man said, "It is good 
that you have come back to me. I have missed 
you. I was wrong to send you away. You shall 
never leave me again. You are my son, my heir. 
I have changed everything. Hermas, my son, come 
nearer — close beside me. Take my hand, my son !" 

The young man obeyed and, kneeling by the 
couch, gathered his father's cold, twitching fingers 
in his firm, warm grasp. 

"Hermas, life is passing — ^the last sands, I can- 



312 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

not stay them. My soul is empty — ^nothing beyond 
— very dark. I am afraid. But you know some- 
thing better. You found something that made you 
willing to give up your life for it — it must have 
been almost like dying — ^yet you were happy. 
What was it you found? See, I am giving you 
everything. I have forgiven you. ^ow forgive 
me. Tell me, what is it ? Your secret, your faith 
— ^give it to me before I go." 

At the sound of this broken pleading a strange 
passion of pity and love took the young man by the 
throat. His voice shook a little as he answered 
eagerly : 

^Tather, there is nothing to forgive. I am your 
son. I will gladly tell you all that I know. I will 
give you the secret of faith. Father, you must 
believe with all your heart and soul and strength 
in " 

Where was the word? The word that he had 
been used to utter night and morning, the word that 
meant to him more than anything he had ever 
known — what had become of it ? 

He groped for it in the dark room of his mind. 
He had thought he could lay his hand upon it in a 
moment, but it was gone. Some one had taken it 
away. Everything else was most clear to him : the 
terror of death ; the lonely soul appealing from his 



THE VILLAIN 11^^ THE CHRISTMAS DRAMA 313 

father's ejes ; the instant need of comfort and help. 
But at the one point where he looked for help he 
could find nothing; only an empty space. The 
word of hope had vanished. He felt for it blindly 
and in desperate haste. 

"Father, wait ! I have forgotten something — it 
has slipped away from me. I shall find it in a 
moment. There is hope — I will tell you presently 
— O, wait !'* 

The bony hand gripped his like a vise; the 
glazed eyes opened wider. "Tell me," whispered 
the old man ; "tell me quickly, for I must go." 

The voice sank into a dull rattle. The fingers 
closed once more, and relaxed. The light behind 
the eyes went out. Hermas was kneeling, full of 
agony, beside the dead. 

One would have thought this would have sent 
him back again to the Christians and the holy faith, 
but he had bargained away the name of God and 
Christ for worldliness and pleasure, and so he went 
forward. He was now very wealthy and powerful. 
He married a beautiful woman, Athenais. A son 
was born to them who was the idol of their hearts. 
Yet all their wealth and power did not give them 
peace; they longed for something, they knew not 
what. To try and find peace Hermas thrust him- 
self into the world's excitement and glory. He 



314: THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

built palaces, he patronized art, lie gave banquets 
to kings, lie sent grain ships across the seas; but 
peace did not come. One day he entered the great 
chariot races at Antioch, and his black ^N^umidian 
horses won the victory over a score of rivals. Her- 
nias received the prize carelessly from the judge's 
hands, and turned to drive once more around the 
circus, to show himself to the people. He lifted 
his eager son into the chariot beside him to share 
his triumph. 

Here, indeed, was the glory of his life — this 
matchless son. As the horses pranced around the 
ring, a great shout of applause filled the amphi- 
theater and thousands of spectators waved their 
salutations of praise: "Hail, fortunate Hermas, 
master of success ! Hail, little Hermas, prince of 
good luck!" 

The great acclamation and the fluttering of gar- 
ments in the air startled the horses. They plunged 
violently forward, a rein broke, a wheel of the 
chariot caught against a stone parapet, and the boy 
was tossed into the air, his head striking the wall. 
When Hermas turned to look for him he was lying 
like a broken flower on the sand. 

Some of you know the agony of the days that 
followed; know, as I do, by personal experience, 
what it means to have a son, who holds all your 



THE VILLAIN IN THE CHRISTMAS DRAMA 315 

heart, trembling in the darkness between life and 
death. Hermas tried to prav, but he could not, for 
the name he used to pray to was lost. His wife 
begged him to pray, but he could only say, "Long 
ago I knew something. It would have helped us. 
But I have forgotten it. It is all gone. But I 
would give all that I have if I could bring it back 
again now at this hour, in this time of our bitter 
trouble." 

A servant entered the room and told him that 
John of Antioch was waiting to see him, and also 
Marcion, the old pagan priest. Hermas and his 
wife, broken-hearted, went together to meet them. 
The good Christian looked the young man tenderly 
in the face and said, "My son, I have come to you 
because I have heard that you are in trouble." 

"It is true," answered Hermas passionately. 
"We are in trouble ; desperate trouble, trouble ac- 
cursed. Our child is dying. We are poor, we are 
destitute, we are afflicted. In all this house, in all 
the world, there is no one that can help us. I knew 
something long ago, when I was with you — a word, 
a name — in which we might have found hope. But 
I have lost it. I gave it to this man. He has 
taken it away from me forever." 

He pointed to Marcion, the old pagan priest. 
The old man's lips curled scornfully. "A word! 



616 THE GEEAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

a name !'' he sneered. ^'I promised him wealth and 
pleasure and fame. What did he give in return ? 
An empty name." 

^^Servant of demons, be still!" The voice of 
John of Antioch rang clear, like a trumpet, through 
the hall. "There is a name which none can lose 
without being lost. There is a name at which the 
devils tremble. Depart quickly, before I speak it !" 

Marcion had shrunk into the shadow of one of 
the pillars. A bright lamp near him tottered on its 
pedestal and fell with a crash. In the confusion 
he vanished like a shadow. 

John turned to Hermas, and his tone softened 
as he said, "My son, you have sinned deeper than 
you know. The word with which you parted so 
lightly is the key-word of all life and joy and peace. 
Without it the world has no meaning, existence no 
rest, and death no refuge. It is the word that puri- 
fies love, and comforts grief, and keeps hope alive 
forever. It is the most precious thing that ever ear 
has heard, or mind has known, or heart has con- 
ceived. It is the name of Him who has given us 
life and breath and all things richly to enjoy ; the 
name of Him who, though we may forget Him, 
never forgets us ; the name of Him who pities us 
as you pity your suffering child ; the name of Him 
who, though we wander far from Him, seeks us in 



THE VILLAIN li^ THE CHRISTMAS DEAMA 317 

the wilderness, and sent His Son, even as His Son 
has sent me this night to breathe again that for- 
gotten name in the heart that is perishing without 
it. Listen, my son, listen with all your soul to the 
blessed name of God our Father." 

The cold agony in the breast of Hermas melted 
away. A sense of sweet release spread through 
him from head to foot. The lost was found. The 
dew of a divine peace fell on his parched soul, and 
the withering flower of human love lifted its head 
again. The light of a new hope shone on his face. 
He lifted his hands above his head and words of 
prayer were on his lips : ^^Out of the depths have 
I cried unto thee, O Lord ! O my God, be merciful 
to me, for my soul trusteth in thee. My God, thou 
hast given ; take not thy gift away from me, my 
God ! Spare the life of this my child, O thou God, 
my Father, my Father !" 

A deep hush followed the prayer. "Listen!" 
whispered his wife breathlessly. 

Was it an echo ? It could not be, for it came 
again! The voice of the child, clear and low, 
waking from sleep and calling: "My father, my 
father!'' 

It was no echo; the prayer of Hermas was 

answered. 

I have brought this story to you because I know 
21 



Sl8 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

that to many of you it is your own story. You 
have lost out of your heart all that personal and 
real conception of God which made your prayer 
and your faith a comforting reality in which you 
could trust. You are wandering in the darkness 
without God and without hope in the world. God 
help me to bring back the lost word to you ! Open 
your heart and let him come back to you again 
with all the old tenderness of sympathy and love. 



THE EASTER CONSPIRACY 319 



CHAPTEE XXVIII 

The Easter Cois^spiracy 

Some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto 
the chief priests all the things that were done. And 
when they were assembled with the elders, and had 
taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, 
saying. Say ye. His disciples came by night, and stole 
him away while we slept. And if this come to the gov- 
ernor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So 
they took the money and did as they were taught— 
Matthew xxviii, 11-15. 

Modern cities have not gained so many points 
in deviltry after all. It is very easy to read be- 
tween the lines here and see the skeleton of a whole 
political machine. The governor was the city boss 
in politics ; he was a carpet-bagger from Eome, and 
though he was independent of these fellows in a 
certain way, he found it necessary, in order to keep 
his fences up and hold himself solid in the saddle, 
to keep a strong political machine among the local 
politicians at Jerusalem. These elders and chief 
priests talk a language that is very well known in 
our modern towns to-day. It is the language of the 
man with a "pull." The soldiers, scared out of 



320 THE GREAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

their wits, came hurrying as fast as their legs could 
carry them into the city with the marvelous story 
that, while they watched the sealed tomb in 
Joseph's garden, suddenly the earth rocked to and 
fro under their feet and a great being clothed with 
lightning came down from the sky and rolled away 
the huge stone door from the tomb they were guard- 
ing. What could they do but flee ? And fortunate 
they considered themselves to have escaped with 
their lives. Something had to be done at once to 
quiet the town. If this true story of the resurrec- 
tion of Christ went abroad among the people, if 
these soldiers went about blurting out the simple 
truth, the whole town would believe in Christ and 
accept him as the Messiah, and the ecclesiastical 
politicians in Jerusalem would, every one of them, 
find himself "a statesman out of a job" in short 
meter. 

In their excitement they send out messengers 
and gather in the chiefs of the ring to decide on a 
course of action. It does not seem to have occurred 
to them to accept the truth as it was, admit that 
they had been deceived and had been in the wrong ; 
they would risk their souls by continuing in the 
wrong rather than lose their political control of the 
city. And so they devise this scheme. They rea- 
son : These soldiers are poor f ellows^ they get barely 



THE EASTER COl^SPIKACY 32] 

enough to keep body and soul together, and a little 
money will go a long way with them; so we will 
just draw on the boodle fund and bribe them to 
keep still, for we shall have the whole city about 
our ears unless they are silenced. 

The moment, however, they began to talk to the 
soldiers about keeping still, new difficulties arose. 
The soldiers said, "We are willing enough to take 
your money and keep still, but we have got to have 
something to tell. We were left to guard a tomb 
with a dead man in it, and the seal of the Roman 
government was put on the tomb ; and now the seal 
has been broken, the great stone door has been 
rolled away, and the man is gone. The grave is 
empty. What are we going to say about that ?" 

To this the schemers replied, "You shall say. His 
disciples came by night and took him." 

At that the soldiers laughed in scorn, and re- 
plied, "ITobody would believe that. Have you seen 
those disciples ? You know who they are ; twelve 
ignorant, untrained fellows ; there is not more than 
one of them, that fellow Peter, that has a spark of 
fight in him — and when this Jesus was waiting for 
trial he swore he never knew him, and went back 
on him entirely. Beside these men there are three 
or four women that have been crying all the time 
since the crucifixion. We never could make any- 



322 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

body believe that that crowd of weaklings came and 
overpowered a company of hardened veterans like 
us, when tbere was nothing to gain by it but to get 
a dead body." 

Then some more cunning man among the plot- 
ters said, "Tell the people that you fell asleep, and 
while you w^ere sleeping these fanatical friends of 
his came and stole his body.'' 

"Yes/' say the soldiers, "that will put us in a 
pretty pickle ! We shall lose our necks that way. 
You know what it means for a Roman soldier to 
get caught sleeping on guard ; his body goes to feed 
the vultures inside of twenty-four hours." 

Then up spoke a sly old elder, with a leer and a 
wink in one eye, "Don't you worry about your 
necks. That sleepy story is the best yet. You tell 
that, and if it comes to the governor's ears, and he 
shows any disposition to make any trouble for you, 
I have a pull with the governor and I'll stand be- 
tween you and all danger." 

And so the soldiers were finally persuaded and 
went out, carrying the money in their pockets and 
with their parrot-like lie on their lips, to explain 
away the resurrection of Christ. 

It is very interesting and suggestive to note 
what a diverse group of people will sometimes be 
gathered in defense of a bad cause. Shakespeare 



THE EASTER CO]S^SPIRACY 323 

makes one of his characters say, "Misery doth ac- 
quaint a man with strange bedfellows/' and poli- 
tics in defense of a bad cause many times illus- 
trates the same fact. 

A gentleman in southern California went out to 
look for some of his stock that were in danger be- 
cause of widespread forest fires. When he came 
upon them he was astonished to find not only 
his cattle and horses, but a deer, three wildcats, a 
coyote, and several rabbits, all alive, and appar- 
ently in no fear of him. They watched his ap- 
proach with indifference, the timidity gone from 
the big-eyed deer, fear taking the place of venom 
in the wildcat's purr, and a professed honesty shin- 
ing in the gray coyote's face. The rabbits sat on 
their haunches, as meek as the pets of children. 
The rancher drove the stock through the smolder- 
ing brush, the deer going along with the cattle, the 
rabbits hopping along at the rancher's heels, and 
the coyote and the wildcats keeping pace with the 
rest. But when the burning field was passed and 
the danger of immediate destruction no longer 
threatened, the deer broke into a run for the distant 
hills, the rabbits were away like a flash, and the 
old defiance and snarling leer came back to the 
wildcats, while the coyote plainly showed that he 
was the same old cowardly, slouching thief as of 



324 THE GEEAT SINNEES OF THE BIBLE 

yore. How often we see that illustrated when, to 
save the domination of some corrupt and wicked 
political machine in a city, saloon keepers and 
gamblers and prize fighters and thugs and deacons 
and elders, and even an occasional preacher, will 
flock together rather than see the corrupt machine 
go to pieces. 

We have here another suggestion which deserves 
the greatest emphasis, and that is the crime of lead- 
ing another man to sin. These soldiers were an 
ignorant type and poor, with but little opportunity 
for intellectual or moral cultivation, while the men 
who were bribing them were men of education and 
culture and wealth. Yet they deliberately bought 
these men up as they would purchase so many 
calves in the market, and sent them away with the 
hired lie on their lips. And, no doubt, if you had 
approached them about it they would have had 
some plausible excuse on their tongues, and would 
have claimed that the end justified the means. But, 
according to Jesus Christ, to cause another man to 
sin is just as wicked and damning as to go and do 
the sin yourself. Do you remember that heart- 
searching declaration of eTesus when he was setting 
forth the value of a little child and said, "But 
whoso shall offend one of these little ones which 
believe in me, it were better for him that a niill- 



THE EASTEE COiq^SPIRACY 325 

stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were 
drowned in the depths of the sea V^ In that day the 
mills were hand mills, and the grinding was done 
in stone basins with another stone worked by hand. 
That sort of a millstone was just about heavy 
enough, if it were tied about a man's neck, to sink 
his head under water and drown him. A great 
many people condemned to death were executed in 
that way, so that Christ by this illustration must 
have meant to teach that to cause another person 
to do wrong is a capital offense. 

This is susceptible of very wide application. 
Down at the heart of things it means that our at- 
titude toward our fellow-men must be one that 
shall, in so far as we have the power, lead them in 
the right way. We cannot draw back with Cain's 
question on our lips, ^^Am I my brother's keeper ?" 
and expect to escape condemnation when we stand 
at the judgment seat of Jesus Christ. 

There is an old story of Edward the Confessor 
which tells how he spent thirty years of his life in 
poverty and exile while the cruel and rapacious 
Danes ruled in England. At last, after the death 
of the most powerful of the Danish kings, the Eng- 
lish people, high and low, recalled Edward to the 
throne of his father. And Avhen he had been wel- 
comed back by the people, and had been crowned 



326 THE GREAT SIl^N^ERS OF THE BIBLE 

and anointed as king, and had been honored by all 
the kings of Europe^ his treasurer and his court- 
iers, thinking to gladden the heart of their king who 
had known so much poverty, wished to show him 
the riches of which he would now be the royal pos- 
sessor. And so they took him into his treasury, and 
showed him large barrels filled with the yellow 
gold and the white silver treasure that had been 
raised by cruel and oppressive taxes from the Eng- 
lish people. They thought their new king would 
be charmed and delighted at the sight, but they soon 
learned their mistake. The old story says that the 
king saw a sight they did not see. He saw a fiend, 
or demon, or evil spirit, sitting on the treasures, 
mocking and sporting at the miseries of the people. 
He seemed to see the blood of his poor subjects on 
the money which had been extorted under the name 
of the "Danegeld ;" a tax that was supposed to be 
used to get rid of Danish pirates, but which was 
really put into the coffers of the king. The king's 
heart was sore to think of his people, so dear to 
him, who had been pillaged and despoiled; so he 
caused the treasures to be returned and no more 
to be raised in that cruel way. 

!N^o man can look over modern life, even in our 
own country, under the Stars and Stripes, and 
see money brought into the treasury by licensing 



THE EASTEE CONSPIRACY 327 

the liquor traffic, the stains of blood upon every 
piece of it — the blood of drunkards, the red heart's 
blood of drunkard's wives, the blood of little chil- 
dren — and behold the corrupt political machines 
that in our modern cities sell the law for so much 
a statute as at auction, that protect gamblers for a 
reward, that use the police force not to enforce 
righteous laws or to protect the interests of the 
people, but as a threat by which to extort tens of 
thousands of dollars through blackmail, and know 
this money is used to fatten the creatures of politi- 
cal rings, and to bribe the base and ignorant and 
so perpetuate the brutal rule of the political boss, 
without praying God that in every one of our great 
cities there may be leaders like Edward the Con- 
fessor, who shall rise up in the majesty of man- 
hood to scorn the blood-money wrung from the sins 
and sorrows of the poor. 

But, as every question of reform resolves itself 
back to the question of personal righteousness, it 
remains for every one of us to smite, with all the 
power we have, these vicious influences in modern 
society which degrade and ruin manhood and 
womanhood. It is better to fail, while doing the 
best one can for the right, than to shout with the 
victorious party at the loss of self-respect through 
having compromised with the wrong. We can stand 



328 THE GREAT SINNERS OF THE BIBLE 

by with fidelity and share the fate of righteousness 

in the community. 

A ship arrived at San Francisco recently which 
had been two hundred and ninety-six days from 
Newcastle, Australia. She had been in great peril 
in a storm at sea and had had long delays. One 
night, when she was in great danger, the captain 
asked the captain of another ship to ^^stand by" 
through the night, and the captain did so at great 
risk to his own vessel and his own life, but finally 
was the cause of the salvation of the other vessel. 
As soon as he was safe in harbor, the captain of the 
ship that had been threatened with wreck gave his 
first attention to show his appreciation of the other 
captain's assistance and sent him a gold watch, and 
went before the council of the city of Sydney and 
told the story of his heroism. On learning of it the 
Sydney authorities presented to the noble captain 
a medal bearing hi« name on one side, and on the 
other the simple inscription, "The man that did 
stand by." 

In the midst of the campaign for righteousness 
that is going on in our modern life, when the liquor 
traffic, the gamblers, the plunderers, the thieves, 
and the political demagogues club together to de- 
bauch the courts, to entrap the unwary, to brutalize 
the poor, to stir the passions of the people, so that 



THE EASTER CONSPIEACY 329 

the poor shall hate the rich and the rich shall be 
suspicions of the poor — and all this for selfish aims 
and purposes — in such a fight I want to share the 
fate of righteousness ; to be no more popular than 
Jesus Christ would be if he stood in this place 
and sought, as of old, to make it easy for men to do 
right and hard for them to do wrong. Kather than 
anything else I would have Christ look down upon 
me and say, "The man that did stand by." 



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